Gundam: Ignition
by WhiteFangofWar
Summary: Original Gundamverse fiction. For years, Earths exiles have lain in wait to regain the upper hand on their persecutors. But the revolutionary new Mobile Suits they stole are just the tip of the iceberg... Rated for Language & Violence. ON HIATUS
1. Beginning

Authors Note: I'm sure my paltry summary can't explain everything, so here goes. This is an AU Gundamverse story written by me and reviewed by Jeremy. I don't own anything related to the existing ones, but all the characters you see here are mine. I put this in the Seed Section because its the most populated branch right now, and because this site doesn't have an Original fiction section. As such, my future comments will try to answer/reply to any reviews I get. Enjoy!

**Bold**- Computer Text

_Italics_- Thoughts/Emphasis

- - -

Gundam Ignition

**Phase 01: Beginning**

_'As the old adage goes, all things must have a beginning and an end. While I don't believe anyone has ever woken up one morning and thought to himself: 'Hey I think I'll begin a war today', they begin, nonetheless.' –Transcript of Master Yasim Daravon, Founder of the House of Daravon._

- - -

Mae Yu Wa Iji Sin Ji Te no Kani 

_Ne Muri O Ma Wari_

_Iji Kan Ji You Yamete O Ga_

DES's youngest chief designer on record had spent the past few days trying to work on the poor-man's cargo barge. After four days, he was no longer particularly anxious to continue doing so, considering the project at hand.

Grease from the open service compartment he had crawled out of now stained his normally auburn hair a darker shade of scarlet red. While he knew many colonists his age had lamented having his other major physical drawback since the dawn of time, he could consider himself lucky- the glass specs he wears across the bridge of his nose are slender almost to the point of invisibility, and they only served to make him look more like his title.

Many people have also lamented his current complaint in the past, albeit only since spaceships with gel pack compensators were invented- the tremor of a less-than-classy spaceliner lacking said compensator mechanisms, the frame of which trembled now and again with the power of its symmetrical bank of four heavy particle engines. Bryce Daravon shook his head in annoyance- he is too used to more advanced ships than this rugged barge vessel and it's tremors. _Good thing most of the assembly wasn't done on a ship_ _at all_, he acknowledged to the motionless metal head of the machine in front of him, _I'd never be able to get any real work done here. _

The head gave no indication that it had heard him. Of course, it had not- he knew this machine and it's two brothers standing behind it, however advanced, are self-aware as bricks. He has only ever been deluding himself into thinking these big pieces of tech he had spent four years working on at last count could think, reason, or feel.

He had only just slid back into the service compartment in the machine's right leg when someone slammed its hatch shut, instantly enveloping him in complete darkness. Bryce did not writhe or shout- the nervous apprehension he had bottled up inside now was not directed at the darkness or the machines, but towards the people he knows are just outside that hatch, the asshats who had played this joke on his at least twice before.

"I got the message, guys" he sighed perhaps overdramatically, taking care not to let the metallic shell muffle him. "Can't do a thing with these tremors anyway."

The service hatch still did not open. "That's the idea, professor", a teasing, but girlish voice came back to him. "I think they put us here just to keep _you_ from messing with the insides again."

Still in the dark, he snorted. "A last-minute check never hurt anyone-"

"Ah", a different voice reached him now, this one brash and rough, yet caring like an elder brother's. "There's a difference between last-minute and 'I want to crawl around my play place'. Get outta there, Bry- we got other things to take care of."

Finally, the hatch flew open and Bryce spotted black-haired Umil Granq, the only one of his crew that had not yet burst his bubble, looking like a baby deer in headlights. Farther back were the other engineers on board: Elya Proctor, with her lime green hair dangling into a ponytail down the small of her back, and the modestly beefy form of Troy Haliburton, wearing the thick black work gloves they were supposed to wear standard issue on the job.

He looked at his own bare hands and chuckled faintly. The slack green suits with the DES emblem they all wore now were dark green, slack, and felt like wet rubber once appropriately soaked with perspiration. Troy was the only one who liked the gloves, who wore them when ordered to, or even when not. Despite these quirks, despite the slenderness of his comfort zone in this area, this team was the closest thing he had ever had to friends.

Bryce stood, squinting at the lights of the bay even though he had only been in the dark for a minute or so, before focusing on what the their eldest member had said. "They have VR simulators _here_?"

Troy cocked an eyebrow while Elya tried to get shy Umil to laugh at that. "I spoke to a guy who said that without them, this slowpoke's crew would go nuts inside a week. It's just like analyzing the real machines really… and a lot less greasy", he noted, indicating Bryce's messy mop of hair.

"Okay", he conceded, following the others from the ship's secondary bay. "But they're there so we can test the MS in a real battlefield environment… _not_ so we can play Star Viper 5 for hours on end, am I right?"

Troy, the one this was mostly directed at, laughed again as they walk out into the decently crowded main corridor. "Maaaaaybe. What's the difference?"

He nodded slightly, understanding what Troy meant. It had always like this, between them: while Bryce was undoubtedly the brains and the workaholic of this particular DES crew, white-blond and athletic Troy was really better suited to be leader. The team knew it, they just hadn't said anything yet. In the field of armament design, or more specifically DES, he was almost as on the ball as Elya, who was behind Bryce, yet he joked, he smiled, he played. In this chief designer's opinion, he talked way too much for his own good.

_Thump_. Distracted from the calculations of MS design for only a moment, he looked back. Absent-minded as ever, he'd just brushed a girl in the hall he'd never seen before. Long and blond, her relative shortness being the only thing keeping her from looking exactly like she'd walked straight from some Clyne House demonstration. Suspicious, even with the uniform of a new commercial crewer.

He realized Troy and the others had gotten ahead, and put any thoughts of suspicion out of his mind. Girls like that weren't part of his universe anyway.

- - -

Bianca Tanner breathed a quiet sigh of relief that seemed to linger in the air around her. For a moment, she thought she'd been discovered. _Just some other guy on this crate who can't hold in his 'impulses'. That makes three today._

Actually chuckling nervously at that, she got back on track, turning into the entryway she had nearly passed, resisting the urge to check if the clod had done her any real damage by thumping into her chest. Of course, her lack of a reply (preferably a rude one) was suspicious like a number of things she had neglected to take care of. Just had to hope the guy didn't pursue it further.

_Still so new at this stuff. But it's a measure of Edwin's trust in me that I'm here at all. Don't want to disappoint the boss now, do we?_

Still fighting the jitters, she took care to stride through the next area, the passage into the west cargo bays purposefully, as though she belonged there. The other crewer, obviously bored of routine, had decided to let the security scan be enough.

Getting caught here would be a disaster, in more ways than one. She was on a ship that was part of a convoy traveling through deep space- nowhere to run. While Bianca knew beyond a doubt that the myth of peace and non-interaction between the many Houses of Earth was a lie, she had also been warned that the powers-that-be favored some Houses- such as Daravon and Aznable- over others, such as her own. Getting caught here meant an international incident, plus arrest.

So she very _carefully _hoisted the forged binary ID she had been given, first at the guy, then at the scanner. While the guy didn't even look up from his magazine, the door swung open with the familiar _swoosh_ of well-kept hydraulics, letting into the very row of bays DES Crew 18 had just abandoned.

Then she saw them. Didn't have a choice, really- the three machines dominated the transparent plastics that enclosed the bays themselves. The convoy's Captain, from Gemini House, had wisely opted to keep them in the most well hidden and least visited bay. The vacant, twisting metal passages she had passed through made it a pain for the engineers or anyone else to get to. But now _she_ was here, having eliminated all the other bays by trial and error while in disguise. Her objective was far more hideous in person.

Three huge bipedal forms now faced the far bay doors, motionless. One predominantly gunmetal gray and green, followed by a more athletic-looking one with broad wings covering a sharp silver and blue color scheme. Lastly came a larger, squat machine with black and red coating to hide the tank treads it appeared to be carrying on it's back for some reason she couldn't figure.

No longer under watch, her expression became more disgusted with each new machine, especially the treaded behemoth at the back. That was only the only one where, by squinting, she could make out the silver label on its bulging left arm socket- _MS-24G, 'Hyrcanian', Daravon Engineering and Armament Systems Inc…_

_Hyrcanian_, Bianca thought in disgust. _One of three awful war machines made only to kill the people its masters don't like. I still can't _**_believe_**_ how Daravon keeps pretending its hands are clean after making these…_

A faint clank brought her back to reality, and she waited a moment to make sure the way was still clear. No crewer was supposed to be back here, especially not a Junior.

Nothing. _Time to do what I came here for. _She had been worried that the controls of the older, more run-down freighter would be unfamiliar. Instead, the silvery panel at the back of the scaffolding looked just like her father's weaponless ship. Just like there, the panel was both protected and marked by a steel plate with a naught but a single white circle to designate it. Behind that, the plate's alcove beneath the circle hid the main control dial which, coupled with a screen and number pad, could control all features of the visible bay.

Part of the reason the exposed ventral bays suffered from micro tremors more than any other part of the ship was simple physics- they were positioned on the very outside of the ship, the very first component to take the kinetic force as it built up around a rackety hull devoid of expensive gel compensators. It was why all the viewports on ships generally had external borders protruding _outwards_ to channel tremors away from it.

These bays, Bianca noted, were nowhere near as safe as engineers might believe. Theoretically, all it took was someone with proper ID to hit one button here, twist the dial once… and the hatches would all rise up simultaneously with the dial, exposing everything behind the glass to vacuum. Power tools, trinkets, uneaten candy, debris…

After that, all it would take to move a larger object out of the bay- say, a bipedal tank like the ones just outside- would be another creative 'misuse' of the controls, causing the padlocked gantries anchoring them to the floor to retract into the walls like so. Then the three machines, heavy as they were, would only take a few minutes to drift aimlessly out into space while the ship kept moving on past them.

She checked the digital watch under her sleeve and allowed herself a smile- she'd accomplished her objective well inside the window of opportunity- just as the convoy had been passing the unmistakable solar signature of Earth's sun. In fifty minutes or less, these three particular giant death machines would be so much molten ore.

_Now the hard part- timing it out to the recovery point undetected. Even if one of the other ships sees these, it should take them a moment to-_

VOOOOOOP. VOOOOOP.

_-do that._

All at once, she searched the corridors for a hiding spot, fought to keep the blaringly loud intruder alarms from overwhelming her awareness, and cursed to herself while allowing her sole weapon to drop out of her right jacket sleeve, into her hand. _Damn it. How could they know so quickly? I didn't leave any traces, unless-_

Behind the glass, Bianca's icy blue eyes became huge. A single glimpse outside the ship had proved that 'unless' dead wrong.

It was a ship. Not a lumbering ore hauler like this one and its brethren, or like anything her father had ever owned. A snub-nosed prow topping off an armored shell that covered up hundreds of meters of exposed superstructure. A size and level of speed like that was impractical for virtually every single purpose save for one- the swift, brutal strikes of an attack squadron.

This ship was under fire. And she would bet her right arm that it wasn't _her _people out there.

- - -

"Sim. Off. Now!", Bryce yelled in a rare display of anger. "We're under attack!"

All the same, Troy was slow to shut the machine's second visor down, but it was not a product of laziness, but helplessness, which he now illustrated to the others with his exposed face. "So what can we do? We're civilian! This barge has _no _weapons, the whole point of using it was to keep this hush-hush!"

Pale Umil, who had been at the other visor at the other end, staggered as though Troy had struck him. "An attack? N-no way! Who?"

_Even better_, Bryce thought grimly, _why?_

A massive rumble that scared Umil out of the room and into the hall was his only real answer. "This way!", he heard Elya calling to the rest of the people dispersed around the simulator wing, most of the older than she. "What the hell are you waiting for? Get to your quarters! All civilians are to be in their _quarters_!"

_Of course._ _She_ had been thinking clearly while they argued over who was attacking them, remembering the common civillian protocol in the case of an attack. The thing was, they had never had reason to refer to it, ever, _ever_. The entire House of Birthright system had initially been designed to put an end to all strife, never mind a full-scale military raid. Now, with some unknown enemy attacking a convoy that was supposedly only carrying supplies, few people had the slightest clue how to react.

Too accustomed to peace? He banished the dark thought at once, following the panicked crowd down the corridor, but it niggled at him. _There's only one reason anyone would take so big a risk as to violate the code of the Houses of Birthright- they know about the MS! _

He stopped, holding up several folks that looked like a large family. "Troy! Elya!"

Both swerved as their names were called, confused, then focused on him as he shouted their names a second time over the crowd's frightened murmur. "I need one of you to come with me to the secondary bay!", he shouted over the din. "I think these guys are after the MS!"

But Elya was already too far up the corridor; too enmeshed in the crowd of loudly panicked men and women, too busy trying to help the rare child get to the safest part of the ship. Troy however, nodded as he pushed through the throng. "Only reason anyone would attack a supply convoy like this", he acknowledged under his breath. "And I'm _not _just going to let someone take away four years of our work. How, though?"

He thought about it for a moment as the crowd began to thin out, still hearing the deafening rumbles of missile and beam impacts both within and without. At last count, they had been one among a dozen ships, but the mysterious ambushers seemed equally interested in all of them. A mixed blessing in this case- if they had known which ship held the MS, they would already be dead or captured.

"Cargo bay", he whispered quickly and quietly to the larger teen. "Anno Domino Captains don't surrender their charges, even if they have no weapons. A shuttle, maybe."

Out of reflex, Troy stared at the orange stripes of the nearest emergency access passage as though expecting an enemy- such an unfamiliar term!- to pop out of it any second. "But… there's no way they could get a shuttle into that bay without someone on this ship to open the doors!"

"Yes", Bryce acknowledged, fighting an urge to run to the bridge and warn their resident Anno Domino Captain. They were supposed to be designers, damnit, not soldiers! This whole scenario felt like another insane simulation. "I'm afraid that _is_ true."

- - -

The two DES designers fought to keep any verbal outbursts to themselves as they crossed over the threshold they knew was no longer secure. The steel door yielded to Bryce's card on the first swipe, all the more cause for concern- normally, the machine was more finicky about opening from the outside. What if it had chosen today to accept an infiltrator?

Within the access corridor, with one wall of glass and one of exposed metal, suspicion only heightened at the sight before them. "Damnit! We're too late", Troy moaned.

"Hold it right there!"

The voice, theatrically loud and tough sounding, muffled the click of the weapon, but Bryce knew it was there even when it was pointed at his back. "You. Over there with the other one. Get in the corner. Now!"

There was something in Troy's face. While he didn't dare say anything, his chief could tell from experience that there were several things about their attacker he wanted to mention as they were slowly walked to the far end.

"Now, um, uh… bind each others feet with the wrap wires in the service bin there", the voice commanded skittishly. "Don't look at me, j-just do it!"

Bryce turned, but not to tie his partner's legs with flexible wires. A sudden clanging noise had drawn his head by reflex alone. It was Elya standing there behind them sans her green DES uniform, standing not ten feet away from a facedown body and a familiar-looking wrench. Seeing a weapon slide out of the unconscious spy's hands, he faced her and smiled. "Nice throw."

She still did not come closer, hiding shaking hands from the two boys. "Thanks. I caught her throwing her voice when I was looking for you two after you disappeared on me."

_Her_ voice? "Do you mean…?"

Even as Troy easily picked the unknown figure up by the hair and checked her over, Bryce also recognized the young woman from before. "Yeah. Our infiltrator's a hot chick. A good job at sounding tough, but she was too nervous to look us in the eyes. I wanted to tell you before."

Momentarily overcome, Bryce blinked in absurdity as he picked up the small weapon. "And she was carrying this dinky little tranquilizer pistol, not even a real gun. You think-"

"Ummph."

Bianca rose, but Troy was quick to restrain her to the wall now that she had no weapon. Seemingly oblivious to the latest missile strike, he actively sniffed the air even as she struggled with him flat against her chest. "No grease, no lubricant. _Nothing_, Bry."

Seeing Elya actually looking concerned over the rough way the spy was being treated, Bryce tilted his head at her furious expression over his own deduction. "From the House of Peacecraft, right?"

Not surprisingly, her only response was to narrow her eyes angrily and struggle a bit more with Troy. "That's fine", Bryce said, now trying to put on a façade of wistful toughness similar to the one their prisoner had tried, "what we need to know is what you did to our work."

The girl actually looked _pleased_ over this. "Try looking in a very hot place, then", she blurted out defiantly into Troy's chiseled face. "A place as hot as the hell you're going to."

"The sun", he murmured, feeling his heart sink into his knees. "You ejected our MS units into the sun! Why? Why the hell would you do that?!"

"Isn't it obvious?", she shouted back to him, now losing all reluctance to gloat over his fury. "They _are_ supposed to be illegal, right? Under Anno Domino law? Machines like those… they were never meant to exist!"

Bryce pushed his face into his palms, feeling their body heat cover him. "You idiot… _Peacecraft_ idiot! These were purely for defensive purposes! They are our- and _your_- only chance of surviving the next hour!"

Elya caught this, and turned to him with an eye focusing on the one-sided battle raging outside the exposed bay. "You mean you're…?"

Refusing to remove his palms, he rubbed them even hotter. "I'll space walk. I know its desperate, but the MS units are the only weapons we have left here. We can't take on Shyron military forces with a wrench, Elya."

Expressing the sentiments of all present in doing so, Troy wheeled from his task of restraining their beautiful prisoner in alarm. "Fuck! _The_ House of Shyron? That's the House of Shyron's fleet out there?!"

"Yes", Bryce said drily. "Positive. History of past weapons is something I read a lot about for the past four years, and absolutely _no one_ _else_ uses squadrons of M42 Valkyrie jets like the ones I saw fly by earlier. Fastest armed spacecraft ever recorded… and they _invented_ them."

While Elya was already in the back compartments, fetching what Bryce hoped would be a fully sealed space suit, Troy still seemed a bit taken aback that the Exiled House of Shyron, well known and taught by virtually every living human as a House of evil traitors and murderers, would come _here_.

"What abo…", he whispered weakly, looking out at the now-visible war cruisers with renewed fear, and not just of them. "Bry. Do you think that _he's_ leading them?"

Beside him, Bryce took a deep breath as Elya handed him a vacuum-sealed helmet. "Only one way to find out, right? Keep _her_ quiet, and don't follow me. Alone, in a space suit, I calculate a 40, maybe 50 percent chance of making it to the MS 25-GX without getting shot."

If he had not been so dumbstruck by the events of the past few minutes, Troy certainly would have argued that point, would have wanted to space walk out with his friend and take control of the _Hyrcanian_ or the _Rana_. As it was, he merely nodded, and returned to pinning a suddenly restless Bianca Tanner to the wall again while Elya helped their chief designer suit up against what awaited him out in the void.

"I won't wish you good luck", Elya whispered into his helmet once the seal audibly clicked against its metal. "Because one, I know you hate the idea of luck, and two I believe in you. You and Troy are both very strong."

"Only when I forget to use deodorant", Bryce mumbled weakly from behind his helmet, feeling the familiar burn of embarrassment from whenever he was in close contact with people make him woozy. The joke, like the ones before it, were an unconscious defense mechanism against the sensation. _Just be glad you didn't insult her._

"Never learn…" the spy breathed furiously from beneath him, ignoring Troy as he nearly cracked up. "You guys never learn. All your machines ever do is kill people. Nothing else."

Those were the last words Bryce heard before his helmet was sealed shut onto the bulky suit, and he stepped out into the airlock just beside the transparent cargo bay door- the prelude to space.

- - -

It was slow going. Only those who had walked out in zero-gravity before knew how utterly frustrating it was to try and get anywhere fast, even with the swimming motions they had each practiced on Earth. Bryce, of course, had a small thruster pack on the back of his suit, but a weak one. Adding to his need for haste was the sight of Valkyrie jets, generic dropships, missiles and the cargo carriers they were meant to defeat flashing by him- the slightest hit from a beam weapon or missile would incinerate his suit, and him as well.

So he did a frenzied front stroke, trying to nurse a bit more speed out of his suit even if was useless. _A lucky thing that this ship has portable O2 packs_, he reminded himself, counting his blessings. _A pilot seeing a big, honking oxygen tube stretching from the ship would be crazy **not** to vaporize it. As it is, I'm just small enough not to be noticed._

_Valkyries_. He'd heard about them, seen and analyzed their incredible acceleration systems in the historical records while researching for the very machines he was now trying to reach. Out here, where he could see everything happening at once, they seemed so much damned _faster_ than the aud/vis records showed. In the space of ten breaths behind his visor, two or three flights would flash by close enough to see the details. He counted at least twenty of them swarming the dozen space barges, each with two small beams and twin missile launchers out in front, their main engines actually modeled after old 21st century fighter-jets like the F4 Tomcat.

He would also see a few instances of some considerably slower spacecraft of the same size. Faintly yellow-toned, they were only slightly larger than the nimble Valkyries, and bore no visible weapons in their exposed joints, only a pair of metal prongs. Once he remembered the make and color from the records, his heart leapt. _Mini-shuttles. Come to capture the MS units!_

Looking past the wave that had brushed him by, he saw them; three bipedal machines, built like massive versions of the space suit he now wore… Or possibly like huge suits of medieval armor, what with the MS24-G _Rana_'s tower type shield on its right arm and the MS25-GX _Peregrine_'s classical-style head compartment. To his horror, one of the small utility craft had already latched onto the third one- the bulky _Hyrcanian_, and two others were already drawing within a few dozens of meters of the other two.

_Not with our project, you don't! _Surging forward with all the thrust he could force out of the small rocket-pack, Bryce made a beeline not for the tightly-sealed chest compartment that served as the pilot's seat, but for the open service compartment hatch he had left open before, before slamming it shut once again.

For the second time that day, he was inside of _Peregrine_'s right leg, surrounded by wiring and darkness. While the pencil-shaped electro-welder offered him some light once he flicked it on, holding onto became more difficult the moment he did so- _Peregrine_ was moving, and not under its own power.

_Dragging them back to that big flotilla I saw earlier_, he thought unhappily from his cramped position inside the leg. _No one would expect Shyron's exiles to bring, or even be **able** to field such a force after the past few years. I won't be able to stop them from capturing the Rana or Hyrcanian… but this one stays put!_

With that, carefully pried a nearby plate aside by applying constant pressure to it. Having spent the most time on this MS unit over all the others, he knew _Peregrine_'s insides well enough- the internal plates were actually weaker than the outer hull, and were designed to hold the machine's infrastructure together during a sudden, violent hit, rather than what he was doing now. Constant pressure was its weakness, if it had one. Beyond that was another layer of exposed titanium, which was what the electro-welder was for. One awkward minute later, he was breathing hard in the core compartment's single seat, guidance controls spread out before him.

_Startup sequence… got to remember the startup sequence! _He had heard no more evidence of the battle for a bit, but that was more a bad omen than good. Sweating bullets, the chief designer finally caught his wits by the tail and hammered the white manual startup switch. After using that, one could finish the sequence for any of the units entirely by voice-activation software.

**Main system online**, the main screen proclaimed to him.

"Disable weapon safety protocols", he whispered breathily. "Prepare for combat immediately, and switch to manual control!"

**Security code and voice analysis requested.**

"Right." That wasn't just one code, either; it was six specific code words- DES never took chances with the electronic security measures on its machines. The code sounded to his memory much like an incantation, which was how he recalled it.

"Okay, the code, the code let me think… The code is… General, Unilateral, Neuro-Link, Dispersive, Autonomic, Maneuver!"

**Voiceprint of chief designer DES18 Bryce Weltroth Daravon confirmed. Begin ignition sequence.**

"Yes! Ignition confirmed! Get us _out_ of here!"

At long last, the autopilot was all too happy to oblige before turning the controls over to its creator. Naturally, the kickback was immense… but he would choose neck pains over certain death any day of the week.

- - -

**Commencing ignition, destination Sol, spatial coordinates x394, y918, z581.**

The computer that processed this now was not that of the _Peregrine_. Granted, it had similar design, similar function, but that was where the similarities ended. If a single factor had to be chosen to separate the two neuro-computers as they simultaneously activated, keying in on each other's activation, it was the appearance of their pilots.

The pilot who sat in front of this computer was, to put it simply, a wreck. His faint blue hair had grown long for years, draped down in thick bushy strands off his sagging skull and into the machines beneath his suspended frame. This pilot's arms and legs twitched crazily all the time when they were not gripping the manual controls of his machine, and a similar effect could be noted in the whites of his eyes- where seconds before they had been clouded and disinterested, the knowledge of the _Peregrine_'s activation by a certain someone replaced his lethargy with both a predatory alertness and no small measure of instability.

"So he's finally done it", the long-haired pilot spoke to himself slowly. "The other side of the fate equation is complete. I shall be with you soon."

Then he threw back his head and laughed like a hyena before blasting off for space.

---


	2. Clash

Disc: I don't own the Gundam Verse. This is an AU using its conventions and nothing more.

**- - -**

**Phase 02: Clash**

_'Let it be known that this treaty of non-interaction and all of its legal offshoots remain concrete so long as all parties involved agree to follow it. If the governing body of any House or Nation is ever to knowingly violate it, they shall from then on receive no further protection from it.' –Paragraph 14c of the Anno Domino Basis for Arbitration of Law_

- - -

Trying his best to appear distracted to the point of absence, Admiral Heim Temeritus of Shyron studied the situation unfolding around his group of five war cruisers closely, as well as those forces their opposition had managed to rally against them.

It wasn't much of an obstacle really, but considering how little time they'd had to prepare, and how few their weapons, Temeritus found himself feeling a kind of detached respect for the captain in charge of this supply convoy. A legalized clone, no doubt.

While initially shocked- and with good reason- by the attack, the captain had immediately ordered the floundering, clumsy supply ships into a sort of reversed dome formation, arranging them so that any of the Shyron war cruisers- even the flagship upon whose bridge he stood, the _Blood Grudge_- would be unable to advance without coming within range of multiple ships at once, facing the ship's captain with several choices of who to fire at.

Of course, this did not help them at all against the nimble craft that were perhaps Shyron's most exclusive advantage in any battle- the Valkyries. By his count, each ship here had carried ten of them- two flights worth each, making for a total of fifty. Swarming the barges as they were doing now, they seemed even more numerous.

He took in all of this in utter silence, only a few muffled explosions to punctuate the silence on _Blood Grudge_'s bridge. The majority of his crew were not busy, having no targets in range yet, but they were only fidgeting in their seats, having been fooled by his act of being totally absorbed in the tactical situation, looking for some new stratagem- as if they needed advice from the legendary tactical genius to win such an uneven contest!

All of them did not look his way, except for one. His consort, Vice Admiral Mokno Parker. The tall, bald young man who would have been the master of this operation if Shyron had not had the shining household name of Heim Temeritus on its otherwise dismal combat roster.

Parker did not bear him a grudge for that. Military discipline towards superiors aside, he was at least partway as indoctrinated by Temeritus' ancient myth of invincibility as his crew was. Still, the simple fact that he had discussed the plan for the ambush openly spoke of the man's ability to ignore the veteran officer and think for himself, even if he always seemed nervous and sweaty in doing so.

"Mini-shuttle flight reports successful capture, sir," one crewer, even younger than Parker, spoke up from the west side of the row of seats. "Three units confirmed. They're bringing them in now. Standing by."

"Excellent", he commented, once again acting, trying to sound casual about the whole affair. "Assign Valkyrie flight Theta to guard the shuttles in case of any surprises- those are the reason we came all the way out here to begin with, we don't want to lose them. Order all the rest to gradually ease up their pursuit and firing..."

Parker had moved up from his spot at the back of the bridge, and Temeritus felt something in his gaze he had not felt since the exile of his people some thirty years ago- someone actually doubting the intelligence of his moves. It felt wonderful, but the sensation was dulled by the fact that Parker, ever the unflappable disciplinarian, was only questioning his habit of explaining his orders to everyone within earshot when he had the time to, rather than a simple command. No doubt many of the newcomers had learned to fear Parker's beady hundred-yard stare.

As for his own appearance, Temeritus had always considered himself blessed. His hair, while gray, was shiny, healthy, and plentiful as he could ask for, arranged in a tall flat top above his sky blue eyes that carried out behind the head into dozens of thick tails down the neck. Combined with his obvious physical fitness, he and the young Captain apprenticing under him were an odd contrast indeed.

"It looks like the Peacecraft agent succeeded", he spoke gently to Parker, changing the subject. "I wonder if he ejected before we showed up."

If that was the case, then that agent was doomed to freeze to death in space no matter how good their EV suit was. They hadn't brought all this firepower out here on a whim, of course. They had been given clear instructions from Intelligence to arrive at the intercept point early, giving them time to attack, and destroy two rather pretty commercial vessels belonging to the Birthright House of Peacecraft.

No doubt at all that their commander had cursed his birth House's solemn oath against all forms of lethal weaponry before his body was incinerated. Sure, Temeritus thought smugly, the fancy EMP wave-generators they had faced looked nice, but pitting stun weapons against the real thing was suicidal in most cases... _Such as today_.

From there it had been easy to deduce the plot they were now hijacking. The House of Peacecraft had obviously intercepted news of a new, type of weapon being developed by Daravon Engineering Systems; a well beloved of the Anno Domino legion if ever there was one. They had done so in secret, without the permit of the majority of Houses. From what he knew, Peacecraft had planted a covert agent on the innocuous little convoy carrying the special weapon, had the agent eject the machines out into space mid-flight.

_Right near the sun_. That, to him, was the interesting part of it. The discussable part. The House of Peacecraft, for all its faults, took care of its own historically. Yet no one outside that oddball little pacifist nation could truly say whether the ships had been there to retrieve the weapon as well as their agent. And now their trap had become Shyron's trap.

_Just as well_, he mused after laying curious eyes upon the special units for the very first time. _Those three look promising. Well crafted. Bipedal tanks, it looks like, possibly for suppressing ground riots…_

In fact, he was looking right at the blue one when it raised its right arm, and put a plasma carbine shot directly through the cockpit of the shuttle that carried it.

Right on cue, the old danger senses the Masters had imbedded into him long ago were on fire. "Heads up", he barked down to his crew of rookies. "One of those units has a saboteur in it. _The Peacecraft agent, maybe? No…he wouldn't have fired._ Assign Valkyrie flight Gamma to cover the surviving shuttles. Now!"

He couldn't take his eyes off it, even as Theta flight's five machines readjusted to pace themselves firmly between the live unit and the two haulers and their cargo. In combat mode, the bipedal machine clearly displayed each of its primary weapons. Sprouting from the reflective-silver back plate, two big coal black wings that effectively guarded a full half of its exposed frame. On the rounded shoulders, two double missile launchers. Upon the 'belt', two small bronze cylinders he couldn't identify. Integrated into the right arm, an extremely large plasma buster with three barrels, and each one twice the thickness of a lamppost.

Then those barrels began to spin, the wings to elongate into propelled flight. And Temeritus knew beyond a doubt now that this machine was certainly _not _created for ground combat. Its broad wingspan flexed as though alive, helping the thrusters that laced their back edges kick the bipedal machine up to speeds rivaling the Valkyries it now faced.

In the blink of an eye, two of the Valkyries were incinerated by the circular buster arm, while the survivors frantically fired off their missiles before regrouping around the shuttles. The wings now wrapped around the frame like a cloak that the machine tucked its blue arms into, shrugging off the handful of missile hits while glowing with a strange purple aura.

_The way it moves, so natural… like a giant space suit, conforming to the user's movements… it's like a second skin! _Temeritus sharply regained his breath as Captain Parker began to sidle up to him in worry. As fascinating at this was, he had to remind himself that it was the _enemy_ who was piloting this one. That machine had just killed four people under his command, young pilots who had been led to believe this mission would be _easy_.

He motioned to Gamma flight as it closed, gauging the distance in his head. "Not good. That pilot is desperate to keep us from capturing the other two units, and now I can understand why. Instruct _Kyoto _to move to retrieve the shuttles, and the _Renmazou_ to spray the hostile sector." That would speed up the recovery of the haulers, as well as protect them with a hail of laser energy any sensible pilot would think twice about flying into.

He would finish commanding this unexpected fight as best he could to save face. But he swore to himself to never again underestimate the power and speed of a Mobile Suit.

- - -

A sensation of heat from somewhere behind him was Bryce's first warning. In the time it took him to flip the machine around- exactly the same way he would twist his own body around to look at something- the storm of fire from the closest Shyron war cruiser had filled the space separating him and his destination. He'd allowed the Valkyries to draw him into battle with them, with one group offering itself to him and the other one tagging him from behind with small lasers.

Outside, the dogfight with Gamma flight continued. Inside, Bryce had mixed feelings about the development. On one level, he had never expected the _Peregrine_'s trial run to yield such quick results. He was a DES chief designer, not some ace pilot… but the results spoke for themselves; three Shyron Valkyries and one shuttle lay strewn about space, dead.

On another level, he felt a building sense of frustration. He could even see the two shuttles through the green haze of laser fire… but pursuing them into a war cruiser's immediate zone of firepower would destroy even a Mobile Suit of this caliber. Already, the craft that had taken the _Rana_ was passing out of sight, and towards another war cruiser. He had, in all likelihood, failed to stop them from absconding with DES's most important project in _years_.

_Unless_… There was no time to question why such an inventive yet suicidal move had suddenly popped into his head. He merely _knew_ it would work. _Something_ was telling him to do it Pulling the wings taut by force, he absently shot one more Valkyrie out of space and zipped towards the source of the blasts.

The dagger-shaped _Renmazou_, like other war cruisers and capital ships of its type, initially appeared as nothing but a great lake-sized slab of armored metal, with engines sticking out the back and weapons affixed symmetrically at various spots. Avoiding these ships' slow but powerful weapons in combat had been the primary purpose of creating the MS units… or at least, that was what he had guessed. Only the top brass of the Anno Domino legion corps could say for sure.

Bryce worriedly resisted the urge to pull the wings over the frame, knowing he would need every ounce of the maneuverability they offered to survive. _The time has come to find out if my guess was right. If not, I am so very, **very **dead._

Then he was among the main batteries of _Renmazou_, dodging and darting every which way to avoid the heavy weaponry mounted on the prow as they illuminated space around him with massive columns made of the neon green light of death. This close in, one could see the very windows and bays of the massive cruiser, and on occasion even the people within. He caught a passing glimpse of one rather startled bridge officer that looked a bit like Umil with his small, squinty eyes and short stature, then tore past that area, clearing the main artillery section.

Not bad. He'd given the gunnery crews fits providing such a nimble target, but hadn't fired a single shot in return… and now he could see by the bright flares erupting back the way he had come that those big beams hadn't been meant for him- the bridge of one of the cargo barges was now an expanding sphere of light. _Which one? The Captain's?_

No time now. The shuttles were just ahead of him, closing on a more broad-based cruiser to slip into its docking bays even as Valkyries poured into them by the score. Still more flew about the supposed 'safe zone', giving their lives to give the shuttles a clear path.

He had just set up a shot with the triple buster arm when space flared brightly again; this time, all around him as the _second _cruiser's guns opened up. One beam grazed the left leg before he could do anything, sending the machine tumbling end-over-end until he was looking at the _Renmazou_'s guns again. Upside down.

_It's over. _Bryce reeled in terror. _The Valkyrie flights are coming in for the kill. One MS Unit against a whole fleet, what the hell were you thinking?_

As if summoned by his despair, four fresh machines now launched from _Renmazou_'s bay, aiming for him. Beyond his immediate vicintity, another barge burst into flames…

And then two of the Valkyries exploded, just like that. The other two wheeled off in a panic, and Bryce caught sight of the machine that had saved him.

While familiar in shape, he had never seen it in all his research- Bryce would have remembered a behemoth like this for the rest of his days. White armor, pale like a ghost, occasionally interrupted by blood-red joint coverings, and small connecting beams holding the arms aloft as they fired. A concave, helmeted face, framed by two active Vulcan guns and what looked like _horns_ on top. While the left arm held one weapon; a black cylinder beneath a thick protective gauntlet, the right was nothing but a mass of pearly metal shaped like razor-edged swan feathers, ending in a focus-lens barrel roughly the size of the _Peregrine_'s entire head assembly.

It was an MS unit. And it certainly wasn't any of his.

- - -

"_What the hell _is _that_?"

Fortunatley, Temeritus was not expecting an answer from any of his crew any times soon- they were struck speechless as he was.

The new arrival, after having somehow snuck up on them from the relative 'up' of space, now floating in the main window as if taunting them with its size alone. Thanks to quick action on the part of the _Kyoto_'s commander, he had cornered the first rogue MS, had personally dispatched a returning flight to deal the death blow. The new arrival had not only drawn all eyes on both sides from the smaller unit, but had vaporized two of the offending craft with only two shots from its head vulcans!

It was only the beginning. As Temeritus caught Parker's astonishment, the white MS turned and casually annihilated the other two Valkyries. All four pilots dead, and weighing in on the Admiral's heart with the others.

Over the din of the mounting damage and casualty reports, Parker spotted his idol moving for the main communications console, and actually _pushing_ one bewildered ensign out of the way when the military hand signs failed to shut them up.

For the moment unable to do anything more about their crisis, Parker shook his head; these young ladies and men might have been his kin in the House of Shyron, but they were no soldiers. Knowing the protocols, Parker replaced the admiral at the helm, trying to bring some semblance of an organized retreat to what was rapidly turning into a chaotic rout.

Since the initial appearance of the new, larger MS unit, the original target had seemed reluctant to move. As Parker watched closely, the machine's pilot shook it off and headed after the new arrival.

His heart leapt- the winged MS had just fired its buster at the new one! Granted, it didn't seem to make a difference- the white MS easily blunted the shot with the cluster of pearl feathers that made up its right arm, and then turned back to vaporizing three more Valkyries, firing off three of the dozens of feathers like large dagger-shaped rockets.

"You heard me! Cut _all_ the Comm feeds and back out!", his idol was still yelling hoarsely over those very feeds, "That maniac's got a Slave Drive on him, and he's using it to control-"

_Then _he saw the ship the admiral was yelling at. Too late, he knew Temeritus had caught what he and his crew had all missed. Their bulky carrier ship _Counterstriker_, previously assigned to the rear to let the ships with greater firepower take point, had been gradually moving forward to the epicenter of the fight. Slowly but steadily, enough so that it wouldn't be noticed by the civilian crew… if what Temeritus said was true…

While bellowing his own orders to pull out, Parker's eyes locked onto the culprit again. By now, most of the Valkyrie flights had gotten wise enough to leave him alone, but two radiant sources of glowing fire still opposed the new machine- the _Counterstriker_'s own sparse beam and missile weaponry, and the other MS unit. Both were frantically blasting away at the white MS, both momentarily unified in trying to avert what its pilot had set into motion.

"Cut all feeds for the war cruisers too", Temeritus was saying, far more locally. "They have their instructions for the rendezvous point, and Slave Drive computers are so old that no one would expect one like that attacking them."

"Uh… sir?", one of the youngest looking crewers interrupted, pointing. "Look out there."

Because of that direction, both men had the scene burned into their recollection forever. The second MS turned towards the ship it had manipulated into its path, exposed, still recalling its remaining Valkyries flights, and holding a _minimum_ of two-point-five thousand crewers, officers, engineers and pilots, as opposed to _Blood Grudge_'s flat thousand. They saw the bipedal machine draw the metal cylinder in its left arm back like an old hand grenade. Slowly, tauntingly, lazily… then it swung the cylinder forward as it erupted into a burst of extremely bright red light- and created a line of that same light straight down the middle of the _Counterstriker_.

- - -

Bryce stared from the _Peregrine_'s seat at the redline with terror equaling only his enemies on the _Blood Grudge_, watched as the _Counterstriker _cracked in two from the slash, and its crew met their heated deaths.

"No… No!"

The weapon manifested by the new MS was clearly discernible now. Another breakthrough designed for the MS project, the lethal handheld beam weapons such as _Peregrine_'s beam daggers and _Rana_'s beam glaive were meant expressly for the purpose they'd just witnessed- inflicting heavy damage on capital ships once an MS got in close enough.

Yet if this weapon was indeed a sword, then it was by far the longest and most flexible one he had ever seen. Easier to call the trailing stream of energy a beam whip, as that was what it reminded him most of. The absurd length of the bright red whip had not diluted its power at all- it had cut right through the ship without slowing down. Now the last of the resulting explosions were consuming the carrier utterly, leaving only two mansion-sized chunks of metal hanging there in space.

A new churning sensation struck Bryce that had nothing to do with the high velocity maneuvers he'd been taking the MS through. Even if it was of his design, that whip was a beam weapon exactly like the ones he'd shifted through for the other three models. The weapons he'd designed personally, never even sparing a thought to what they were _for_. The same could be said for the majority of the weapons set before him now. He clenched at the controls for the buster, for the beam daggers, for the launchers, as if seeing the bare truth of them for the very first time.

_Blood Grudge_ woke him up. It came on with its sudden salvo of blasts, directed towards the white MS and nearly hitting Bryce. _No_, he wailed inside his head in despair, _not them too! This isn't a battle, it's a massacre!_

"Stop iiiit!"

Drawing his own beam weapons without thought, he charged the pale white MS as well, even if it meant placing himself into _Blood Grudge_'s firing zone. The daggers manifested themselves as twin pinpoints of bright violet energy moments before crashing into their opposite number. Just as he expected- as he had _intended_- holding onto the daggers through such an impact was much like holding two real daggers while one attacked a massive sword-wielder.

Both suits danced between the big beams, paying each one only enough concentration to avoid them cleanly, while dedicating the rest of their attention to slashing away at each other. "Why do this?", Bryce yelled over his short-range headset after a particularly heated exchange. "You're not from Anno Domino or the House of Shyron! **Why did you kill those people**?!"

While a big part of him expected no response, he leapt up in his seat after the response cut across his aud/vis reciever bands. It's pilot was an older male by the sound of the shrieking laughter that assaulted his ears, and completely mad if he was to be any judge. What followed that sounded like pure nonsense at first:

"Ahaha… ha… follow the purpose. Follow the equation! I _hear_ it! It shows me the way, just as it shows you! But I see _yours _isn't complete yet… continue to fight! Complete the flawless equation!"

_Who is this kook?_

No answers came, and the next hit was perfectly timed, forcing Bryce backwards as the other MS incinerated his missiles with its beam whip. He aimed the buster arm, but the white feather missiles had already targeted his weapon before it was even active, brutally knocking it aside as well. Stunned, Bryce retreated backward… directly into the _Blood Grudge_'s beams. In one single instant, he felt searing pain that ended with _Peregrine_'s feet no longer existing.

Descending upon his helpless prey, the white MS gently but menacingly whirled its whip around the chest cockpit area of the _Peregrine_, but then thought better of it. "Keep at it, little one", the shattered voice came to his ears again, sounding a bit more stable this time, "it has been lonely being the only one blessed with the future's equation. Listen for it, and it will find _you_!"

On that note, it jetted for the outer reaches of the battle, destroying each and every Valkyrie that blocked it, and laughing all the way.

- - -

"Cease fire and join the fleet", the admiral breathed shallowly. "Anno Domino should be on its way by now. Captain…I owe this crew my apologies for not thinking clearly."

Mokra Parker looked up from the blinking damage displays, as surprised as his junior crewers. "Absolutely not the case, sir", he spoke across the bridge area with an emphasized tone of courteousy. "No one here even suspected that new Mobile Suit would have a Slave Drive, _sir_. You are being too hard on yourself."

"There was something off about that one", Temeritus was still mumbling angrily to himself as he stalked away from the main window. "I don't give a damn how skilled a pilot laughing-boy was, by all rights he should have been _atomized_ by our barrage. I don't understand… anyway, instruct the others to throttle back at waypoint 52-19. We'll proceed to the rendevous point from there. You have the bridge, captain."

While duty called, Parker truly wanted to follow his idol back to his quarters. _It wasn't his fault_, the pale-faced man repeated again in his mind. _That machine- no, both of those Mobile Suits- were as maneuverable as our special Valkyries and as heavily armed as a private army. We had no hint of any such resistance coming here._

The only thing he could truly fault Temeritus for was losing control after the _Counterstriker _had been obliterated. He had ordered a full salvo against the pale white MS in a frenzied rush, as it trying to prove to himself that the machines were not unbeatable. That had placed the entire crew of the _Blood Grudge _at risk while the rest retreated, but everyone knew they had gotten lucky. He wouldn't speak of it. It hadn't happened.

The mad laughter they had intercepted over the feeds came back to him now, summoned by Temeritus' derogatory new label for the merciless pilot of the white MS. For some reason, neither pilot had bothered turning on the voice-scrambling features any piloted war machine would certainly possess. Parker had heard the voice of the other pilot as well; a younger man by the sound of him, but certainly more attuned with reality- with the horror of the thousands of lives lost- than his dark counterpart, who didn't seem to care one iota.

_That one, we would have had_, Parked decided firmly, seeing its defeated wreckage now receding right in front of him. _The MS 25-GX Peregrine, I believe it is called… it could not have survived against us even if our crews are mostly composed of rookies. It certainly could not have destroyed one of our ships with a single action._

He studied the incoming damage reports for the other vessels now, remembering that they had originally been considered redundant. No one had expect to take serious casualties on this mission, and the reinforcements Temeritus had ordered to wait for them at the rendevous point would not salve the wound.

Besides their survival, there was only one bright side he could think of at the moment, but it was a bright one still, quickly occupying his thoughts. _Peregrine_ had only been a sample of what a Mobile Suit could do against plain old-fashioned capital ships. It could very well be that the other two- MS 24-G and MS 22-G, the ones _Kyoto_ now held safely within its bowels- were equally as good.

If that was the case, and they were to be placed at the disposal of the legendary strategist, Admiral Heim Temeritus himself… then the _Counterstriker _was effectively avenged. He would see to it.

- - -


	3. Recovery

Disc: Same as the last two chaps.

- - -

Phase 03: Homecoming

_'I still have difficulty believing that there are still rational people out there who believe this proverbial 'Solar Barrier' to be the limits of human exploration. Is what lies beyond it, as they claim, a depthless void no craft could ever hope to fathom? No! The same was once said of the far side of the world, and we broke those. The same was said of the Earth's atmosphere, and we broke that, too. Give it time. My followers and I will be the ones to break this barrier.' –Master George Walther, debunking the Solar Barrier_

- - -

The trickle of the relief ships was slow at first, but eventually Umil Granq could not look out the window of his secluded quarters without seeing one or more pass by. The more war-inclined ships had come first, responding to the desperate hails, no doubt. Laboring away on conventional drives, they had finally arrived with a grouping of transports tagging along. The new arrivals were moving all throughout the original supply convoy… Or what was left of it.

No one had an accurate damage tally yet, but Umil had seen two of the big barges blown apart by Shyron vessels, each explosion just making him want to dive further into the cushions of the cot he shared with Troy Haliburton. He wanted to shut it all out, including the rumbles from the ship _he_ was on as it took repeated missile hits, each one a possible hit on this very cabin.

Now Umil felt warm tears on the cot, born not of sadness, but out of fear. Some distant part of his mind did resent this, hiding in his quarters while the battle raged, even if that was what he had been ordered to do. He just didn't like being in danger, that was all. He honestly never knew how it was his friends did it, stood up and kept a straight face when their footing could be blasted out from under them at any second.

_We're DES workers! _He reminded himself vehemently, arms folded over his knees. _We shouldn't have to deal with stuff like this! That's why I got into this job in the first place, to stay away from Anno Domino!_

Anno Domino's relief ships were out there right now, though. The so-called 'arbitrary military force', and they had placed their own people among the convoy. Any other time, he would consider it a boon to be part of a House that curried such favor with the most powerful land/space army on record. Now, anyone who knew better than to believe its claim of neutrality also knew that they would be hot to exact vengeance for their expensive new MS weapons.

And so it was. After working up the courage to leave the cabin, he first saw Troy and Elya again in the main corridor, surrounded by four soldiers and their commander which caused him to dart back behind a wall; even if they were on their side, the Anno Domino soldiers all looked twitchy and they all had guns. Each of the burly men wore glossy black helmets and armored jumpsuits as their uniform, while the commanding officer, a Lieutenant, had a natty marine blue dinner jacket and pants with a little gold rank sash across his heart. The Anno Domino officer uniform did not demand headwear, letting the officer exposed his thick brown mane of hair for all to see, whereas the soldiers were all shaved bald beneath their helmets.

There was another one with them, too, obviously the reason they were here. A short woman with beautiful blond hair, cursing and thrashing as she was being restrained by two of the soldiers. Even weaponless, she managed to look to Umil as dangerous as the soldiers through sheer frenzy. _Wait… we passed her in the hall before. Is she…?_

"So Captain 11 was certainly killed with his crew then", the squint-eyed officer was speaking to Troy crisply. "He only failed his objective because of _this_ young lady? She caused all the trouble, then?"

"Yes, sir", Troy told him nervously. "But I don't think she was with the Shyron fleet; our chief designer called her a Peacecraft."

"Peacecraft", the officer spat, giving his captive a mean look. "Yes, I would not be surprised if she was. Still, her actions allowed our greatest enemy to abscond with the special weapons your House promised to us. Interfering with Anno Domino military projects is a capital offense."

"Um, sir? What-what will happen to her?", Elya asked him once the girl in question had been dragged away kicking and screaming. She had made no effort to hide the tone of concern, prompting the officer to fix her with his hardest stare. "She will be tried, of course. If the House of Peacecraft is willing to admit this young woman is one of their people, then they have the right to defend her legally."

_That's a BIG if_,Umil mused unhappily from his hiding spot. _If they do that, they'll be admitting they planted a spy on board. More likely they'll claim she _**_was_**_ part of the Shyron task force, keep their own hands clean._ It was what he would do.

"You have our gratitude for helping to apprehend this dangerous criminal", the officer told the DES crew, allowing himself a small, informal smile. "We will submit a request to the House of Gemini for a replacement clone. Oh, and while the final decision will be up to my superiors, I am confident we will not press charges to your own House for the loss of the MS units or the gross misuse of the MS 22-GX, so long as we receive replacements in due time."

"_Replacements_?", Troy blurted out. "But we've been working on them for _four years_! We can't just build new ones from scratch!"

"That will be all", the officer silenced him, not wanting to hear excuses. He was likely about to spin on his heel and return to his own ship when a distinctive piano tone sounded off. Clasping a hand to his left ear, he listened to the piece everyone knew was in there for a moment before looking back at Troy. "I just got the word. The vessel _Crusader _just found the MS 25-GX drifting in space, and its pilot is intact. If you kids wish to meet him, I suggest to go down to the main hangar. I will instruct the guards there to let DES crewers through for the time being."

Once he was gone, Umil breathed out. _Bryce put more into those machines than any of us. It's no surprise that he pulled a crazy stunt like that to try and get them back. _Just another example of his three dumb colleagues having no sense of self-preservation whatever.

All the same though, he was glad to hear none of them had died. Explaining that to Bryce's father would not have been easy.

- - -

For the longest time, he drifted in the endless void. With both the pilot's mind and the machine crippled, the _Peregrine_ was more like a heavy space suit on Bryce's body than ever before. It no longer permitted full movement, and the stinging sensation in his legs would not abate.

Just as well, as he had a great deal to ponder before the shuttles brought him in from the airless cold. Bianca was the first among them, her adamant insistence that the MS units were redundant for Anno Domino.

Those MS units, which were now in the clutches of Anno Domino's only enemy, the exiles in Shyron. This assault had been Shyron's return to the world stage after nearly twenty years of silence since their exile. _Troy's told me before_, he remembered soberly, _he told me how his parents were both DES tech support aboard Anno Domino ships when Admiral Heim Temeritus blasted his way out of Earth, helping his people to escape justice. Because of his tactical genius, they're both dead._

Even if he hadn't been there personally, Bryce had no doubt that the legendary traitor would find a way to put the stolen MS units to evil use. Along with the score of ships Shyron had obviously been building in secret, it was entirely possible he had just witnessed the balance of the coming warfare tilting in Shyron's favor. Anno Domino could no longer ignore their lingering threat; they would be anxious to finish what they had started on Earth, forcing Shyron's millions of people to take refuge on the far side of the cosmos.

Last of all, but by far the most alarming- the pale white MS. He had not built or designed it, had never even laid eyes on such a monstrous machine. Yet it had jumped into the fight eagerly, with a pilot at the controls who made up for his homicidal insanity with skills and power like nothing Bryce had ever imagined. _Who the hell _**_was_**_ that guy? Why did he choose here of all place to start killing people? And just __**who** built his machine, superior to the ones **we** put our hearts and souls into making?_

No answers awaited him. Instead, he crawled out through the crudely managed hole in the pilot compartment, and opened the right leg's service hatch before he saw the barge's lights again, along with the lights of Umil, Elya, and Troy's eyes.

Total exhaustion struck him the moment his feet touched metal, and he fell down upon Elya's chest for a moment. "Whoa there, Bry", Troy chuckled behind them. "I see the conquering hero's feeling a bit horny."

"Don't you joke", she scolded back him, carefully prying the space helmet off and releasing a great deal of the sweat her supervisor had built up inside of it. "He's just tired. You would be too, Troy, after fighting _that _monster."

That stirred Bryce up enough to raise his aching head up to match hers. "You saw him? That big white MS?"

"Only on the view screens", she admitted, visibly shaken from all the savage violence she had just witnessed. "He went through us first, then he went for you. He took out the whole bridge with one shot from his launcher. He was like…" her voice trailed off into a shudder at this point, not wanting to suggest such terrifying evil could be of divine origin.

Evidently Bryce did not care much for the other MS pilot either, for he sank further down following her words, then collapsed on the floor. His last conscious thought was the memory of the _Counterstriker_'s explosion, and the murderer's strange laughter

- - -

The new room was completely dark, so it took Bryce a moment to realize that he'd been sleeping for a good long while. He could not feel the tremors that had kept him up at night on the supply convoy, but could also tell he wasn't back home on Earth either. Fumbling for the switch, he instead prompted Umil to open the door after hearing him curse, and let the light from the outer corridor in.

"You're up", he noted dully. "Elya was a bit worried after seeing your wounds. We left your clothes on the opposite bed."

The mousy technician's last sentence drew attention to the fact that he was devoid of any clothing at all, save for minimal undergarments. Crying out, he pulled the sheets back over top and squinted into the light behind Umil. "So how long was I out?"

"'Bout two and a half days. The Anno Domino ships brought us to this DES Lunar Shipyard about six hours ago, told us to contact our folks. We're on Phobos now."

Lying back down, he mulled that over for a moment. The Phobos Shipyards one of a few installations the DES had been allowed by Anno Domino to create. Like the one on Earth's moon, it was know to provide a steady flow of new materiel to Anno Domino, and was guarded accordingly by their benefactor. Guarded by walls of at least thirty large capital ships, he doubted even the ghost-white Mobile Suit could get at them here. "Thanks Umil. I'll contact my father once I've had something to eat."

"Sure, no problem."

Aside from a lingering headache, it didn't take him long to get going after that. Garbed in his packed civilian clothes as he was, he did draw a few cocked stares from the local crewers and soldiers while adjusting to the mammoth structure his team were now given free reign of. Once he had picked up a few things from the surprisingly well-kept civilian guest diner, he felt he understood at least enough about the Yard's internal setup pattern as to not get lost.

Now came the moment he had dreaded since waking up here. Moving up the shortest of three lines for the three enclosed communications hubs, he tried to enter the frequency as calmly as possible. While it could very well be that one of his old 'buddies' in Anno Domino had already tipped him off, the way his luck was going at the moment, he would probably be the one to break the bad news to Jakob Daravon, the selected leader of his House.

It wasn't long before the man's face and upper body appeared on the screen. Bryce's father had had a dark chestnut beard than went all the way up into his hair as long as he had remembered, perhaps making him look a tad older than he truly was, more sage. He usually stuck to more formal clothing than civillian, such as the magenta suit and tie he bore now. While the premier of Daravon was no philosopher, Bryce had come to rely upon his determination and resolve as a stabilizing presence for times like these. He had never seen his father laugh or cry to his memory.

"Good to see you, son. There's no need to apologize.", his deep voice began abruptly. "I've already heard everything from my friend Admiral Gisbourne. _And_ I'm alternately proud and terrified at what you tried to do."

He smiled back grimly over the link. "High praise for something that was, in retrospect, totally useless, father. Now Troy tells me they want us to make some more to counter the ones we lost."

Jakob's jade green eyes tightened with regret. "Yes. I've talked to him too, he was furious about it. Perhaps if we leave the repaired MS 22-GX unit with them as a lump sum, they will give us more time… but you have understand- they already paid us for these weapons. We weren't supposed to lose them the week before delivery."

"Tell that to the Shyron fleet, father."

To his surprise, Jakob leaned a notch closer to the monitor on his side, locking eyes with his son. "Those booths _are _reinforced, but you should still be careful who hears you say that. Gisbourne also told me he doesn't want the attack to be widely known yet. People will start asking questions about why it had to be now. You know that the ministers for the Houses of Peaceraft and Lurkveil have been breathing down my neck in session lately…"

Hearing his father wax on about politics again, Bryce just shrugged helplessly as he always did. "I don't need to understand all of that to follow it. And before I forget, it _is_ good to see you again, dad, even after this disaster."

If they could have embraced they would have. Instead, Jacob merely smiled back and drew back from his view screen on Earth. "And the same to you. By the time you get back here, we should have a better idea of what they expect of us now. I'll pull some strings, try and get the deadline extended... Stay safe, stay strong, Bryce. You are a Daravon, after all."

"As if you would ever let me forget", he murmured good-naturedly after the screen winked out. That left him with just one other person he had to talk to today. He didn't think this one would be anywhere near as civil.

- - -

_I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer._

Bianca Tanner sat with her knees outstretched over the outward-jutting bench, keeping as much of herself off the cold cell walls as possible. Regardless, she couldn't help but shiver.

After a foul-up of this magnitude, she really hoped that was because of the frigidly cold cell, not because of fear of what was coming. While the burly guard just outside had not given her any clues except for the occasional hundred-yard stare, she could try to imagine just how messy the news was going to be for the governors of the House of Peacecraft.

_Still_, she reasoned grimly, _that's the best possible scenario for me. If they claim me, I go home safe and never run any mission ever again. Back to agricultural duties, I suppose. They have to claim me. Edmund would never leave me to these bastards._

Of course, there was the other paralyzing fear- that Edmund Batose and Milly Peacecraft were no longer available for comment. Those other ships had certainly not been Peacecraft vessels, but they _had _been using their ambush point. _If they're dead…no. Can't be. Don't fear. No fear._

So it was with a fair amount of built-up tension that she first saw Bryce motioning the black-suited Anno Domino guard aside and pressed against the hydraulic plastic door. "I checked the reports", he said gravely, trying to sound nonchalant but really only making it worse, "no sign of your friends. Either they ran away from Shyron early, or…"

"Don't say it", she snapped at him from behind the gate, trying unsuccessfully to hide any signs of grief.

Instead of unwanted pity, however, Bryce now radiated anger. "Then you tell me something. Why'd you do it? Why'd you try to destroy the machines we'd been working on for four years?"

"Didn't listen the first time, hunh", Bianca retorted, the old defiance from the cargo bay back in force. "Did the idea ever penetrate that thick skull of yours, that just maybe Anno Domino already has more damned _weapons_ than it needs?"

Too late, she saw the designer's own inner struggle- to prevent himself from showing the selfsame scorn for the House of Peacecraft's common ideals he had flaunted before. "Okay, maybe you're _not_ an idiot. But they're the ones who _asked_ us for them in first place. No one had to ask why- they only have one enemy. Shyron."

"One enemy", she repeated, sounding incredulous. "And they call _my_ people naïve. Geez."

"What?"

"Oh come _on_", she scoffed, now standing up to get right in his face about it. "Latest estimates of Anno Domino from my people place their strength at over a hundred and fifty capital ships. Over a hundred thousand soldiers, and something like two thousand air and ground vehicles. They're the only real army anywhere."

Bryce snuck a glance at the guard after that, fearing he actually might take offense at this ranting. But no; he was still sitting out in the hallway, standing straight up but nearly motionless. "Well, yes. That's the whole point. They're here to protect us, to prevent the Houses from trying to kill each other. It's been that way since the old Masters fell."

Closing her eyes, she shook her head and hair dismissively at him. "Don't you see? They're the 'police', but no one polices _them_. They didn't want those death machines of yours just for Shyron; they're tightening their control over us. All of the Houses."

"That's ridiculous!"

"Is it?" Knowing she had shaken his faith by the look of him, she now moved as close to his face as the transparent pane would allow. "Anno Domino has a lot of dirty secrets, _Bryce Daravon_. Maybe you should try asking your dear old dad about them some time."

No longer sure of what to say, Bryce was about to storm from the cell when something else occurred to him. "Temeritus and Shyron have killed a lot more folks than your friends in Peacecraft. I would think you'd appreciate the fact that they're finally going to deal with those bastards."

It was a cheap parting shot, one that made Bianca hide her tears back in the rear area of the cell, but it was too late to take it back now. He had no jokes to offer this time. Harsh words still ringing in his brain, he nearly charged into the soldier on the way out.

- - -

Little by little over the next few days at the Phobos shipyards, Bryce leaked out the details of their conversation to his team whenever they were working on repairing the _Peregrine_'s thruster systems and lower superstructure. Still wanting to keep the MS units- and their capture- a secret to the world at large, the ranking officer there had given them a rather large, private hangar in which to do so, and their voices echoed distantly in the vast space that was probably meant for a warship.

"She seemed so normal before", Elya was commenting thoughtfully. "She'd have to be, to blend in. But I tried talking to her yesterday, and she was so angry with me. I could feel it."

"Few days in prison'll do that to you", Troy piped up callously from behind the limp hanging left arm guard. "Shame she's so into the hating-our-guts thing. She's kinda cute."

Bryce flinched away from an access panel, frowning as he remembered the accusing look in the Peacecraft girl's eyes. Still, he quirked a tight grin at his friend. "The 'hating-our-guts thing'… I don't suppose anyone has figured out _her _name yet? She sure knows mine."

Shaken heads all around. "Didn't think so." Dropping down casually from the arm, he came to the last bit of damage they had to fix- the hole in the sheet of metal connecting the right leg and torso, the one he'd had to make with the torch. While Umil was already quietly welding an oversized bracing section to the damaged area, that section's integrity would be weakened until they could complete a more thorough repair job at home.

"Our last day here", he acknowledged to the others. "As well as hers. Milly Peacecraft will bail her out, right, guys?"

"She's… not Peacecraft", Umil spoke up suddenly, whisper-quiet so that only Bryce could hear it inside the leg compartment.

"What? What do you mean, Umil?"

He turned to face the chief designer with his usual depressed, pallid expression, actually made a bit sinister by the fickle light of his torch. "I, I overheard Anno Domino officers talking. _They_ think she's from Shyron."

He snorted, not caring if the others heard. "Bull! You weren't there, Umil. She was trying to destroy the MS, not capture them-"

Umil shushed him, for some reason trying to keep it between them alone. "All I know is what I heard, sir. And you'll notice no one from Earth has come to her defense."

Bryce leaned against the cramped walls of the leg, still idly shaking his head in denial. "She's brash and bossy, not manipulative. But like always, speculating won't get us anywhere…"

On that note, he poked his head out from the right service hatch and spotted Elya right off. "I'm taking a short break", he said, springing from the hatch.

Hanging from a service cable with one foot in the sling at the bottom, she blinked quizzically. "Uh, right… Can I ask _why_?"

Snorting in amusement, he craned his head back at the arm she was working on while keeping up a steady pace out of the large bay. "I can't get that girl's talk out of my head; I'm going to find out exactly where she's from." He signaled, flashing three fingers up peaceably before picking up his pace. "Back in fifteen, Elly."

- - -

While it was a foregone conclusion that the star field that filled all of the Phobos shipyard's windows had no day or night, the installation's overseers had solved the potential crisis of shattered sleep-patterns by cycling the luminosity level of the interior lights according to Earth-time. Thus, everyone knew when the seven-hour 'night' had come on Phobos.

Because of this, the lineup for the communication stations were much shorter than they had been the last time. Bryce did not have to wait long before the menu screen swam into existence before him, requesting a 12-digit address input.

He quickly typed in 15 numbers; 12 for Jakob Daravon's mansion on Earth's eastern continent, and 3 for the extension to his mother, Edwina Daravon.

That woman, who held the iron will of her husband in a more diminutive and older-looking form, knew Milly Peacecraft as something other than an aggravating rival, possibly a friend. But more than that, she could access the civilian datanet from a terminal at home, without all the red tape Anno Domino typically placed on military access terminals.

But to his professional and personal disappointment, Edwina's brown hair and blue eyes did not resolve on screen along with the trappings of their home on Earth. Instead, a balding man with silvery wisps of hair around the back of his cranium was adjusting the screen upward so he could look into it. "Young Master Bryce!"

Out of the respect this man seemed to command as well as he gave, he responded with a fake smile as well as speech. "Hello, Mr. Matthews. I'd love to talk, but I'm kind of in a rush. I need someone there to find some information on the public terminals. If my mom isn't sleeping, could you go get her? I might need her help."

Their butler paused a moment to think. "Sir, I am much older than your father, but even _I_ know how public terminals work. I can locate this information before leaving tonight."

"She's not there?"

"No, sir. Off-planet, as a matter of fact."

The way he said it, full of genuine obsequiousness instead of the kind of friendship he had developed with the family, made Bryce suspicious enough to pry for more. "If you don't mind… where?"

Matthews rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly, and Bryce knew now that there was something he wouldn't like. "She heard about the incident, I'm sure… so where is she, Matthews?"

"She has, well, taken an, ah, _personal_ interest in the matter, sir. Master Daravon was busy, so she, well, she demanded to speak with the Anno Domino officer in charge of the new task force they've put together, one Admiral Landon."

His reply was almost a shriek. "And you LET HER GO WITH THEM?"

"Yes, yes", Matthews mumbled not to Bryce, but to himself. "I was afraid you would take it this way. I cannot understand why the lady insists on going on these little trips without telling anyone."

"Because he wouldn't let her go", Bryce answered for him, frantic deductions whirling through his head as he spoke.

"Yes. Most likely so. Still, I do wish she would not make me her sole confidant in these matters. Ah, but now I'm rambling. The information you wanted, young master?"

"Oh no", he whispered faintly, head swimming. "Oh NO! She's going with Landon to get the MS back! She doesn't know about Temeritus, or about the white one!"

Not surprisingly, Matthews was as confused by this as the other few folks who overheard him from within the booth. "'MS'? 'White one'? What do you mean?"

Without answering, he immediately cut the connection and sped from the booth, nearly tripping over the stairs leading out of the lower level. _I have to do something to save her_, he thought frantically. _Even with Anno Domino's fleet, if Shyron decides to use the MS units they've already captured…or if that madman shows up again…_

If either of those things happened, in all likelihood, the Anno Domino task force positioned at the Solar Barrier would be pinned down, too far away from Earth to receive support, and eventually wiped out.

There was only one thing he could think to do. Sprinting back down the bay, he brushed past Troy's muscular form without even checking to see if Umil had exited the leg compartment yet. "Prep this MS for launch", he barked out more rapidly than ever before, "I'm taking it into battle out the main hangar."

"Bonus Question: Are you _out of your freaking mind_?", he heard Elya shout from somewhere above him. "Now? Why?"

"Elly", he gazed up at her from in front of the suit. "For once in your life, _please_ don't ask me why. If I don't hurry, my mother, and a whole lot of other folks die."

While her own frustrated expression made it clear she wasn't letting the point go, she did do him the courteousy of detaching the gunmetal-colored guywires they had used to climb up and around the _Peregrine_ during its reconstruction. For the first time in many days, _Peregrine_'s chest compartment swung open at the push of a remote.

Troy, unsurprisingly, was the biggest opposition to this sudden takeoff. When Bryce refused to respond through the metal, he hijacked _Peregrine_'s personal comm., his face crowding the pocket-size screen.

"You are _loco_, Bry-boy", he maintained angrily. "Listen to me. That fight is all the way out at the Solar Barrier, you can't get there in a short-range machine like this!"

"No", the other boy replied with equal conviction. "I thought about that already, I can use a comet."

Only his team would have known what he meant, and Troy's face paled as he swore. "That's even crazier, damn it! You saw the simulations, Bry! The MS will fall to _pieces_ if you do that- constant pressure, its structural weakness!"

"I know the estimation", he shot back dryly. "Loss of structural integrity at a rate of 0.741 percent per minute. If I get a fast one, I can be within comm. range in less than 2 hours, lose maybe 80 percent."

"But you'll be at only 20 percent integrity! That's not enough power to fight a _cockroach_!"

"I'm not _going_ to fight, I'm going to deliver a message. Now, get off the leg _or I will kick you off_."

With all his arguments either defeated or deflected, Troy finally looked down at the deck and backed off. "We'll launch you in five", he said ruefully. "I just hope you know what you're doing, Bry."

"Yeah, me, too."

**Main system online.**

"Prepare for launch, shunt all discretionary power to the engines!"

**Security code and voice analysis requested.**

"General Unilateral Neuro-Link Dispersive Autonomic Maneuver!"

**Voiceprint of chief designer DES18 Bryce Weltroth Daravon confirmed. Redirecting power. Begin ignition sequence.**

"Launching!"

And then, before any unit of Anno Domino's could react or sound the alarm, the fastest of the MS units tore out of the bay and into open space.

- - -


	4. Despair

AN: Props to 'the stylus' for my first review. Like I promised, I'll take your suggestions into consideration regarding run-on sentence structure. As for why no soldiers, no one else expected to have to defend the ship from the inside. In addition, too many soldiers on-board attracts suspicion that the convoy was indeed hauling something special, something that few people know.

Regarding updates, don't expect thins quick one to be a daily thing. I have about eight chappies done so far, which I'll submit one for every three days or so.

Disc

Phase 04: Despair

- - -

"Bad luck, Admiral", _Blood Grudge_'s best computer hacker explained sheepishly over the visual link to the bridge. "I've tried every trick I know, but the operating systems are locked up tight; won't even access the main menu until you give it both voice and password authentication."

Watching from the left-center chair separating the two crew pits, Captain Mokra Parker stretched his thin arms out and sagged only a little. The Admiral couldn't pretend they hadn't been expecting such a security measure, even on machines that weren't yet in active service.

Without both a password, and an accepted voiceprint, the only way the House of Shyron could ever use the machines they had just paid in blood for would be to physically remove and replace the main computers, preferably with the simple silicon OS of a standard Valkyrie. Surprisingly, he heard Temeritus immediately order the commencement of such a crude operation from his centermost chair, 'to be attended to at all times unless in we are in combat'.

Cutting the link, he folded his hands over his lap and blankly stared out at the planet just now becoming visible before them. "Navigation. Make certain to cut a wide berth around the Waltherian colony- we want to keep them a secret for now, say, 400 kilometers at all times... You seem distraught, captain. Is something troubling you?"

Parker flinched. _How did he know that? He didn't even look in my direction the whole time he was giving orders. _Not wanting the crewers in the pits below to hear him, he spoke up quietly as he could. "A few things, Admiral."

The older man shrugged. "We have half an hour before the Solar Barrier. By all means, speak your mind."

Parker shifted uncomfortably in his seat, not at all used to confessing his private fears in front of a superior. He had certainly never asked a bridge officer to do this for _him_.

"You are wondering why I did not order our prizes transferred to the hold of the _Blood Grudge_, a ship better armed and armored than the _Kyoto_? Or why I went to such lengths to attempt to use those machines in the coming fight?"

"Now that you have mentioned them, Admiral, _both._ I know we _are_ going to have to fight our way out of Earth's outer planetary ring… never mind the fact that we're in their front yard uninvited; they wouldn't just let us escape with the crown jewel of DES' technology."

"Yes", Temeritus nodded observantly. "I estimate we'll see the first of Admiral Landon's patrol ships before we hit the Solar Barrier. Our ships are larger and more heavily armed, but _his_ will be more numerous. I was once his friend in Anno Domino, you know. I know his style."

"I remember. You were once nicknamed the 4 Devas, were you not, sir? You and Landon and Gisbourne and Yamato, all elite Admirals in the Master wars?"

The admiral snorted. "I don't recall you ever saying you were a military historian, Captain. But yes, I have heard the name regarding the four of us. And I promise you, whatever else you may have heard, that Gisbourne didn't deserve such a title." At this point, his nimble fists both ground into the cushions of the captain's chair, tightening along with his harsh gaze upon memories from before his defection, before the sundering of the four Devas of Anno Domino, who some had rumored in hushed voices were descendants of the old Masters themselves…

"I knew that man, and I hated him then and now. He was better suited to be a crime boss in some hovel city than a military officer. Admiral Yamato was the youngest of us- about your age, actually. But _he_ was never as cruel or stupid as Gisbourne. By the Masters, I wish it was _him_ we were going up against right now instead of Landon. I'd do him without hesitation."

For a moment, Parker and his crew were struck silent by the tale, then urged back to their duties. Parker, however, felt a stronger urge to cheer up this man who fast becoming a friend as well as an idol, even if he kept his hands clear of the other command chair. "Keep looking forward, sir. If things continue to go the way they have, Earth may just be our next target once the MS units are prepared back home."

Temeritus smiled beneath his fancy beige and gold cap. "You are right, of course, Captain. But I was talking about how I'm guessing my old friend Gentz Landon will play it. He'll focus his smaller craft on this ship, wanting to lop off the proverbial head of his enemy, in order to kill me- us- and leave the fleet without direction. This ship is the one most in danger- we will only come out alive with clear tactical effort and a little luck. If by chance we _do_ die, here _Kyoto_ will complete our mission."

Parker slowly nodded, beginning to understand. "Is that the only reason?"

"You figured it out too, then? Smart lad. If I _were _to transfer the MS units here, I would be sending a message to _Kyoto_'s crew- that I had planned to sacrifice them to let us escape with the prize. I shouldn't have to remind you, captain, that most of our people here are, like yourself, from the House of Shyron. Underhanded plots and conspiracies are second nature to them, or so the myths would have me believe."

That part about the myths, at least, Mokra Parker knew all too well, brushing his cueball forehead mirthlessly. He knew from firsthand experience with the House of Walther just what it was like to be amongst foreigners, where everyone treated him with suspicion just because of his origin. To find a superior officer who not only trusted his judgment, but expected that same trust back was a blessing he had thought had been lost forever until now.

"Admiral", called one of their crewers, for once reporting as calmly as he had trained to. "We've picked up signs of unidentified spacecraft just ahead of us. No type match yet."

"Gentz's early", Temeritus remarked, standing up to his full height at once. "Slow to quarter impulse- the faster ships will have seen us first, no doubt. Return to full speed towards and through the Solar Barrier only once the hostile ships have been identified, and instruct _Imperator_ and _Renmazou _to shift to the center of our formation, with all other ships protecting them; I want to see what Landon's got before we're committed."

"As ordered, sir."

- - -

"Five war cruisers, one _Requiem_-Class battleship- the _Blood Grudge- and_ one carrier. Two of the cruisers are taking cover behind the rest of their numbers, sir. They're launching Valkyries, at least forty."

Red-tinted eyes contrasting with his dark skin, Admiral Gentz Landon received the report from his secondary officer, the clone Captain 18 from the House of Gemini, with half his attention and spent the remainder reordering his own forces into a single massive blockade, his heart beating just a little faster. This battle was likely to be on a larger scale than anything any of the clones in his crew had experienced in what was laughably called 'peacetime'; Landon wanted full flexibility, and not just for the usual reasons…

"They've likely split their heist between those two ships", their 'special' guest commented in regards to the two protected ships. "Focus on those, Admiral."

Landon closed both eyes for a moment, suppressing himself from rebuking the woman. She sat in the third center chair of the bridge, looking out at the fantastic view of space his own _Requiem_-class, _Heaven's Gate,_ afforded. Lacking any kind of military getup, Edwina Daravon stuck with some rather old-fashioned silk garments that, combined with her curly hair and wrinkled skin, made her look like a matron, or a chaste nun sans the black hood.

"I'll be the judge of that, mistress Daravon. Watch the Valkyrie wave closely, see if he means to throw that at us right off. Instruct all ships to form a staggered line, with the frigates concentrated in the rear centerline."

Landon did greatly appreciate the contributions DES had made to Anno Domino's power over the years. He really did. However, seeing and hearing the wife of its Premier up here, giving personal orders and expecting them to be followed, never failed to aggravate him. Unlike her much more demanding husband, Edwina Daravon had never known combat, and more importantly, she didn't know Heim Temeritus, didn't know his penchant for ambushing the ambushers. Even with local numerical superiority and the so-called home turf advantage, they were in for a fight; he didn't need any more distractions.

"No sign from the Walther colony", Captain 18 reported gruffly, stepping up from where had been personally assisting their crews moments before. "They seem content just to watch this from home."

Stroking his dark beard, Landon considered that. The mobile colonies of the House of Walther were something he had experience dealing with, serving as he had for so long here in the outer reaches of Earth's solar system. His previous dealings with them had seen them to be courteous enough, but totally focused on their self-appointed task of exploring the universe. Still, to ignore a big furball brewing on your doorstep… he had to wonder what was really going on at that colony right now.

"I don't think they would be willing to allow us to use their terrain for cover", Captain 18 suggested with an odd grunt. "Almost as insolent as the damned Shyron, they are."

He saw Edwina balk a little at that. Either she had not spent much time off of Earth, or she was surprised at a cloned Captain from Gemini House actually displaying conceit and disdain. Most were generally emotioness.

"Take your seat, Captain. Their war cruisers are about to catch up." _As I thought, they're going to use their Valkyrie wave to throw off our timing at the last second. Those things always have been Shyron's biggest edge over us._ "Instruct all ships beside the frigates to ignore the Valkyrie swarm for now, and wait for _Blood Grudge_- the red-painted one- to come into their range."

Before long, the familiar red dagger-prowed ship did just that, prompting the outermost four vessels to open up on it with heavy lasers and missiles. While the larger ship responded wrathfully, Landon's attention was focused on something much smaller; the blindingly bright light that suddenly approached them from the west.

It was _carrying _something.

- - -

Rattling. Shaking. Absolute. Crushing. G-forces. That was all Bryce Daravon's life had become for the past two hours. Even with the heavy vacuum suit, even with the compensators built into _Peregrine_, he had never expected the velocities of the comet he had hijacked to be pleasant.

Just making the choice had been no picnic either. Certainly, a fair number of space rocks had passed by in the time he had had to wait. However, most of them were either too slow or too deadly or not pointed in the right direction. While Bryce had rightly feared for the whole trip that this rock was a bit too far into that second category, he could wait no longer.

_No going back now._ Given further time to reflect, he had come to realize just how dangerous this was. The ability of an MS unit to survive the stresses of being anchored to an active comet for a time had never been a sure thing. Anno Domino didn't want it; it was more of an experimental novelty than anything. Only _his_ team had seen the potential of it- the new war machines, normally meant for short-range flights from a mothership like the Valkyries they were built to counter, could become a far more mobile threat if they could ride upon random asteroids and comets.

_Never could get it to work, really. Just too much hard velocity on those things, like being in reentry for hours on end._ Just as Troy had predicted, his green structural integrity display on the main screen showed an alarming 24.2 percent structural integrity remaining. In the simulations his team had run, the powerful machines simply fell to pieces after dropping anywhere below 15 percentile... _Have to be **very** careful- one hit or sharp turn could take me out._

So it was with no little measure of hesitation that he goosed one thruster to roll away from the surface of the small comet, ditching it in order to catch his bearings in what looked to be a war zone in progress, a modest distance away from the closest moon.

_Valkyries and Dominion-Class Frigates mixing it up_, he thought uneasily. _I'm too late. If I can just find which ship mom's on…_

"Attention, Mobile Suit _Peregrine_! Come in, _Peregrine_!" Only now, free of the comet's gravitic pressure, did he notice that his radio was buzzing with an urgent hail request. It was an out-of-place young female voice, cute and sounding even younger than Elya.

"_Peregrine_ here", he responded, finally managing to pull the unusually stiff microphone down to his chin- all things considered, he was lucky it didn't break. "Acting as emergency messenger for Daravon Engineering Systems. Please open a bay for me."

The female voice now sounded regretful, even through the voice-scrambling software. "…Sorry, but we can't. We'd have to let the shields down and its not safe to do th- AAAH!"

He wouldn't place odds, but it was likely the pristine white-and-bronze lead ship he'd been talking to- several of the Shyron vessels had just coordinated their laser fire, blasting its frontal area after its shields had been weakened by repeated salvos from the Valkyries that now swarmed throughout the combat zone.

"All right", he said heavily, trying his best to sound more confident than he felt about going into battle in such sorry shape. "Guess I'll have to _make_ it safe. MS Central System, activate all weaponry except for beam daggers, reroute all discretionary power, and maneuvering thruster power into aft thrusters!"

**Acknowledged. **It was true this improvised setup did hamper him, switching off the small maneuvering thrusters placed all over the three suits to respond to the wearer's movements. However, pulling such maneuvers at high speeds in his state would just as likely rip _Peregrine _apart. _I don't have a choice, but to rely on pure speed and luck…_

More like a Valkyrie than a Mobile Suit now, _Peregrine_ threw Bryce back into his seat with its acceleration once again, a reminder that his own body hadn't yet recovered from the comet's high-G forces either. Three Valkyries flashed by in a triangle near the lead Anno Domino ship, and he spanned off two shots from the shoulder launchers at them before blazing closer to the main concentration of the nimble little spacecraft at the heart of the battle.

Next, out came the three-barreled plasma buster arm. With the elongated wings still giving him a small degree of protection, he took a moment to aim for another Valkyrie, missed and instead struck the foremost Shyron carrier, which was also facing a barrage from a pair of slender-necked Anno Domino Frigates. Seeing that huge ship dominating the target screen before he flew past it, Bryce remembered that the real battle here was still being fought the old-fashioned way: several big sluggish capital ships on either side, impossible for any of them to miss or avoid being hit by their targets, as the dozens of explosions gouting from the ship identified as the _Watcher_ clearly showed.

"_Bryce_!", the comm.. unit lit up with a new voice. "Bryce, is that you?"

Hearing the voice, his ears instantly flared up alongside his other senses. The lead Anno Domino ship was _behind_ him, but advancing on the destroyed hulk of _Watcher_, allowing several of the larger enemy vessels easy side shots they couldn't pass up. Before he could respond, another Valkyrie wingpair leapt out from behind the hulk and tried to smoke him. While both missed, their pursuit continued across the darkened stretch of pulverized metal, and out towards Admiral Landon's ship at equal speeds to his own.

"Mother!", he responded frantically in between dodging laser fire. "What the hell are you _doing_ here?"

A slight pause, giving him time to sideslip the Valkyries and let Landon's flagship vaporize them with two quick stern shots. "…So Matthews told you. Get to safety, Bryce! There's more at stake here than you know!"

He grimaced at that while curving around to face the Shyron armada once again. While Edwina was usually the more kind of his parents, this was a side of her he had not seen before "How can it _possibly_ be something more important than your life, mother? I came here to save you!"

"Bryce, listen to me", her infuriatingly calm voice came to him, now repossessed of the serenity he remembered. "Jakob has told me. We absolutely _have_ to retrieve the MS units from them, for all the reasons you can guess at, and some others ones too. Please, get to safety!"

But instead he simply cut off the aft thruster power, slowly planting the suit's heavy legs upon the top of _Heaven's Gate_, plasma buster still ready to snipe. "Not until _you_ are safe as well. We stay together, mother."

Another long pause from Edwina, only punctuated by the growing number of explosions as the ship took further damage from the ambush. If she had planned another plea for him to run away, it would never come to pass, owing fully to the terrifying jackal's laughter that now cut across all open bands and rung in Bryce's ears, prompting him to look up and curse loudly in Cantonese.

The pale white Mobile Suit was _here_.

- - -

Bianca Tanner of the House of Peacecraft knew a bit more about body language than one might guess. Like racing on water-skis back home, it was just something she was good at the nuance of. So she could tell just by the heavy click of polished boots' footsteps that they were coming for _her_.

_No fear. Edmund wouldn't want to see me this way. _She sat up, seeing two Anno Domino officers motion the silent guard aside outside her transparent panel door. While one of them was totally nondescript aside from his abnormally large nose, the shorter one was instantly recognizable from posters. Chocolate brown hair, tan skin, large violet eyes, a black collar and the youngest body ever to wear a spotless white Admiral's uniform, if a decade older than Bryce or herself. Admiral Yamato- one of the four Devas of Anno Domino.

She only had a moment to consider before the door swung open at the other officer's ID card. Jump Yamato, or the other one? In the end, she went for the more valuble hostage, running towards him with all her strength, forcing the large nosed officer to quickly slip his arms around her neck to hold her still, and request help from the black-suited guard.

Looking visibly depressed, Yamato spoke up after moving out of the guard's way. "I'm sorry to announce... Our war crimes tribunal has come to a decision", he informed her, his voice sounding a fair bit older than the rest of him. "We gave them time, but Peacecraft has denied any connection with you, making it most likely you infiltrated our group under Shyron's orders. They have declared you a war criminal."

"That's BS!" She shouted over the other officer's repeated attempts to muffle her, no longer caring about secrecy after three days of isolation and prison food. It was taking every bit of effort from both the guard and Yamato's subordinate just to hold her down.

Yamato smiled sadly at her. "None of the other Houses have claimed you belong to them either. Shyron is the only possibility." Following that, he took a deep breath for what was to come, speaking flatly as though the document was right in front of him. "Under article 12 of the Anno Domino War Protocols Act, any individual convicted of murder, grand theft, rape, hate crimes, pedophilia, or sufficiently harmful _espionage_ may be drafted into our legion corps for the duration of their sentence if said sentence exceeds five years. Yours is ten, miss…?"

She couldn't believe what she was hearing, but the slightest nod from the silent guard told her that he had seen this routine before. He, too, was a convicted criminal with a sentence of greater than five years. _But how do they…? _"Drafting _me_? Good. Freaking. Luck, Yamato! You dumbass. Despite what you may believe, I'm Peacecraft. I've never even held a real gun. They're outlawed where I come from."

The young Admiral sighed glumly, seeing an eager expression from the other officer. "You'll understand in due time, miss. Administer the sedative."

_That _got her attention. Struggling wilder than ever, she managed to reach out and slash Yamato's left sleeve with her nails before the helmeted guard stabbed her deep with the needle he'd been given. She had about three seconds to try to balance herself before plunging into the blackest of voids.

- - -

Gentz Landon winced away from the racous laughter with more annoyance than fear, and saw several of his crewers below clutching at their ears and gritting their teeth in vain. _Sounds like it's coming from everywhere at once! No way is this new guy friendly. I'd bet my ship on it!_

Regaining his bearings first, he decided to shoot first and ask Edwina Daravon questions about the new arrival later. "Top deck Peragus turrets, aim and coordinate with _Peregrine_'s plasma shots on the new Mobile Suit!", he roared to be heard over the echo. "Engines, full reverse, all beam weaponry, keep up the pressure on the _Blood Grudge_'s bow. We can still turn this fracas around if that damned ship dies!"

His eyes hovered for only a moment on the ship they were now jousting. The blood-red flagship belonging to the 4 Devas' greatest and only traitor seemed stunned for a rare moment, only firing its own topside Peragus launchers and beams sporadically. Had the peal of insane laughter really carried so far as to affect the minds of Temeritus' own crew?

_I shouldn't be so worried for my enemy's welfare_, Landon reminded himself fiercely. _More time to even the score, we've wasted all our fireworks on that ship's neutron shields; the vessel beneath them is intact._

Beside him, Edwina Daravon was sitting motionless in her seat, her suddenly flush of pale completing the image of a chaste nun from a century ago. "No. No.", the words tumbled slowly from her lips, "Can't be. He's dead. He has to be."

Both to release the pressure beneath his dark skin and to grab her attention, Landon slapped one hand on the metal of his chair. "I don't suppose you'd care to tell us exactly who that is, _mistress_ Daravon?"

She gave his biting sarcasm no answer, merely staring wide-eyed at the display screens throughout the bridge. They were showing the white Mobile Suit narrowly avoiding both the Peragus missiles and Bryce Daravon's broad plasma shots. For a moment, Landon dared hope they had made a crippling hit when several angular pieces of white metal fell from the thing's right arm, but seeing those feather-shaped rockets detonate half their launchers crushed those hopes in short order.

Now the larger Mobile Suit was working a new weapon free of its torso plating, some kind of black metal cylinder that instantly provoked an explosive reaction from the MS 25-GX _Peregrine_: it flew directly upwards toward the other machine, firing missiles before detaching its plasma launcher assembly and attacking with fists only.

Landon's professional gaze tightened; he knew _something_ was up simply by the way the Daravon kid had panicked. "Something's up. Redirect _all_ engine power to neutron shields ASAP, get them back up! Roll and target with the intact belly guns! Now, now, now!"

To his relief, the _Blood Grudge_, now totally unopposed, settled for simply cutting a wide path around the other ship instead of continuing its assault. The thin-edged one called _Kyoto_ was still trailing in its wake with only half of its own weapons functional. But that was the only good news: he also saw _Peregrine_'s shoulder launchers kick back on their little pipe-shaped stands with no result, clearly having depleted the suit's magazine of seeker missiles. He saw its metal fists strike home on the white MS to no avail, and he saw the black cylinder flare up with what looked like solid plasma energy.

"You have my- our- dearest apologies, Admiral", Edwina finally spoke up, the flashing energy reflected in her tearstruck eyes. "It's too late to abandon ship. We are all dead, and we have none but ourselves to blame for it. He'll follow what the equation tells him."

Captain 18, who hadn't heard their earlier exchange, rounded on her suddenly from across the room. "What do you mean? Are you saying you know who's piloting that monster?"

"Know him?" Edwina looked startled, then gave a laugh. A short, but very sad laugh that was scarcely one at all after what had just rocked the bridge. "We _created_ him, Captain. He should have died… but some loose ends can't be gotten rid of so easily."

The pink whip of energy flashed downward, towards the bridge…

- - -

Mae Yu Wa Iji Sin Ji Te no Kani 

_Ne Muri O Ma Wari_

_**Iji Kan Ji You Yamete O Ga**_

_Unh… what?_

**Structural integrity at 16.8 percent. Plasma Buster offline. Estimated enemy Mobile Suit integrity at 97.2 percent.**

The verbal reminder woke Bryce with a start. He looked through his badly cracked glasses at the red-tinged superstructure displays first, then at the white MS still in his viewscreen, trying to grasp and understand what had just happened. Had he really fallen asleep? What was that weird song? _And why I do have a killer headache all of a sudden?_

The MS 00-GX _Alpha_, which he could finally spot the label of underneath its raised left arm joint, had been knocked back by something, knocked away from exposed bridge of the _Heaven's Gate_. While its beam whip was still active, it had been dislodged from its hands, and he could plainly see small chips of white metal flaking from the left armpit. _Something_ had hit it there at a high velocity.

Then he remembered. _It felt like I was dreaming wide awake. I saw everything in black and white, a photo negative, those weird black streamers all over the place… I must have rammed into him!_ A suicide tactic, given his integrity, but it had bought his mother, Admiral Landon, and everyone else aboard _Heaven's Gate_ a few more seconds of life.

The voice that issued from the MS _Alpha_ was as excitable and bizarre as ever, but more rational than he had ever heard that suit's pilot sound. "_So_ the little boy knows the equation now, does he? Do you crave it now? Do you wish to see more of it?"

With that, he aimed his massive arm-mounted beam cannon straight down at the ship's hull, too late to stop the first shot from impacting on hastily recharged neutron shields. Those boiled away, shorting out half the cruiser's systems, but leaving it in one piece.

Fully snapping out of whatever weird chanting had just taken over his brain, Bryce quickly recounted his options. The launchers were out of missiles, the beam daggers didn't have enough power to work, and the tri-barrel Plasma Buster had been detached just as the _Alpha_'s handheld weapon had. The _Peregrine_'s sole reserve weapon, a sawed-off Vulcan cannon, would only be an annoyance to the _Alpha_.

…Which left fists, and ramming with the aft thrusters at full power. Bryce was still in the dark as to what bizarre daydream had compelled him to attempt it the first time, but knew that doing it again would certainly take structural integrity below 15 percent, likely destroying his machine and killing him.

But the alternative was to watch helplessly as the white Mobile Suit killed Edwina Daravon along with the ship. No choice at all.

This time however, _Alpha_'s battle-crazed pilot was prepared. Once he retrieved his beam whip, blocking the Mobile Suit accelerating towards him was easily accomplished. The larger machine shot the round cannon on its right arm forward into the thinned armor of _Peregrine_, physically penetrating it but not firing, then flung it as far as it could away from the ship.

**Structural integrity at 13.5 percent. All thrusters offline. Neuro-computer offline. Internal pressure sensors offline. Structural integrity critical…**

"No!" Both the Alpha's pilot and all those present aboard _Heaven's Gate_ could hear Bryce's strangled shout from the powerless wreck of his MS even as it drifted out of range. "STOP IT! Mother! NO!!!!!"

_Alpha_'s pilot wasn't listening. He swung the beam whip once again, eroding shields with the first strike, and splitting _Heaven's Gate_ down the middle on the follow-through. The resulting explosion knocked _Peregrine_ out of the battle, knocked a few more fractions of a percent off its structural integrity index…

And in that dark moment, Bryce idly hoped that would be enough to kill him along with his pain as well.

- - -


	5. Creator

Disc

Phase 05: Creator

- - -

_"Epiphanies. Are they the sign of a person's inner progression, or of regression? None of the old Masters ever claimed to have one. Interpet that how you will." –St. Hawatt McGlone, Historian of the Reign of the Masters_

- - -

On the bridge of the _Blood Grudge_, Captain Mokra Parker surveyed the horrific damage the last battle had inflicted with pained fascination. _If it were any other ship, we would be atoms drifting in space right now. If it were any other ship, I would order it scrapped the moment we arrived._

He had to stay there, to continue to bust the butts of the crewers they had assigned to repair duty, to keep them from idly looking up from their work every other second to see their home sweet home out the window.

It was primarily a transparent dome, sitting atop the behemoth of an asteroid Parker always thought was shaped like a pulled tooth. Inside the hemostatically sealed dome on the top, the environment of a modern-day city was replicated in complete detail, save for the fact that its sky was a starfield. Below the edges of the asteroid's smoothed top, hundreds of windows and hatches gave away the presence of a combination military base and shipyard that had been built right into the hard crust of the asteroid. It was Shyron's 'Exodus' asteroid colony, and even Parker could not help but feel relief at seeing it again.

Just then, they started getting static hails on a variety of frequencies, messages that were actually being relayed from the shieldless, but unscathed _Imperator_ to the intact short-range receiver of _Blood Grudge_. Their own long range receiver was a black pile of melted slag, thanks to a parting shot from an Anno Domino Frigate. The same went for their neutron shield emitters, Valkyrie support bay, Peragus launchers, and about twenty other smaller parts- they were lucky the ship was still moving at all.

Still, he thought, he would rather be here than on the ill-fated _Heaven's Gate_. He wasn't entirely certain just how much his idol was hurt by the brutal death of Admiral Gentz Landon, only that he had waited for their surviving ships to escape the Solar System before leaving him in charge.

"This is Captain Parker of _Blood Grudge_, reporting a mission accomplished", he replied to the hails. "Please open us up a bay, and have repair crews ready- we had a hot farewell from the Solar Barrier."

"Acknowledged, captain." Just like that, a bay in the middle distance slid open invitingly, and Parker dared to breathe out again. Despite all the setbacks, all the ambushes and lives they had paid with, they had finally made it back with their cargo intact. _Kyoto, Imperator, Cleaver,_ and of course, _Blood Grudge_, were the sole survivors of the eight ships assigned to Temeritus' command. One could only hope their prize was worth at least that much in the way of materiel.

All the same, he could no longer deny the most undignified feeling building up in his long legs. _By retrieving these machines, we may have just signified the end of our long exile! Anno Domino will have no choice but to negotiate a truce! _Parker knew he was jumping to a great number of conclusions, yet a part of him, the part not jaded by years spent in the Shyron Defense Force, could not wait for that day to come.

For the first time, he might yet _see _the Earth.

- - -

"-Looks a wee bit like Jun. Get 'im out of 'at suit."

"Will 'e be okay, uncle?"

"'ard to say. The state 'is ride's in, S'a miracle he's still breathing at all. Survivor from that last fight, probably, never seen a machine like it before."

"Looks sad, even with his eyes shut."

Hearing the strongly accented words filter through, Bryce stirred in the arms of the large man who was holding him, unconsciously pulling out of his grasp. He was definitely in a hangar by the look of it, but not the usual type. It was possessed of far more windows and a shorter bay door, which conformed to the rounded ceiling and floor corners, making the chamber more like the inside of a curved lead bullet.

Too, the people standing stock-still before him were certainly not maintenance people. The larger of the two was a pot-bellied man with dusty brown hair standing up on his head like a tall crown and a nasty-looking red scar running from his right eyebrow down to the bridge of his nose. The other one couldn't be a child of more than about ten years, and most certainly the man's niece if one was to go by their similar bone structures and maroon eyes.

Nestled in the child's small arms was a perfectly round orange sphere Bryce recognized at once. While DES had only recently jumped onto the production bandwagon, the number of civilian 'toy' Haros had been climbing exponentially ever since an engineer from the House of Orpheus had thought the tiny AIs up for both utility and companionship. They could be configured and equipped for nearly any small task, and assistance at larger ones.

Personally, Bryce had never cared to purchase a mechanic-type Haro to help with DES-appointed tasks unless he was _certain_ he would be able to program away its tendency for obnoxious repetition of phrases whenever it became excited, as he had seen from Elya's chattery sky blue Haro. This one, at least for now, was dormant.

"Well, now", the man finally spoke up nervously when Bryce couldn't think of anything to say. "You're one tough guy, ain'sha to wake up from that thrashing so fast."

Only then was he able to place the accent. The dialect had originated from the lower-class neighborhoods of a very old country called Britain, first called Cockney. Owing to the fact that most of the men Master George Walther had picked to follow him came from this country and its biggest immediate neighbor, France, the speech of a member of the House of Walther often sounded something like a combination between the two accents. _Suppose I should be grateful they don't speak in Nadsat. And judging from the shakes, this has to be…_

He slowly removed his space helmet and tucked in under his arm, looking out one window nonchalantly to try and spot a star field while keeping up a steady line of patter in case the guy was going to pull a gun or something. "This is the Waltherian mining colony, isn't it? On the moon Charon?"

The man smirked briefly shooing his niece away. "Correct on both counts. I'm Gabriel Dellacroix, and that was my niece Lotta, and the Haro's name is Nix. Found you drifting on my shift out in the void. That contraption looks 'bout ready to fall apart, eh?"

All at once, the memories struck him harder than any gunshot could have. The raging battle he'd been blown clear out of, the battle where a Mobile Suit had killed his mother… Dropping the helmet, he fell to his knees and stiffly held back the tears that threatened to overwhelm him now.

He did that, but obviously couldn't keep despair from his face, as Gabe noticed immediately and bent down over him. "Easy there. You look awful. Must've been quite the scrap. We'll get some food int'ya. Oh, and don't worry if anyone gives you a hard time- some fellas here aren't very fond of Anno Domino pilots. Just look 'em back in the eye."

_Now here_, Bryce declared inside his head, _is the height of embarrassment. _He was a grown boy crying despite his best efforts not to, and this muscular guy he barely knew was carrying him over-the-shoulder out of the bay after trying to make him walk. He wanted to punch him in the face. Why couldn't he just leave him be? All he wanted to do was sit in that hangar until he died from grief. Was that really too much to ask?

_Evidently so._

- - -

The room was dark, lit only by a single circular emplacement above its counterpart, a semicircular table ringed by seven chairs. The lack of light did nothing to alleviate the claustrophobia caused by a sudden lack of tremors. _In here_, Heim Temeritus, noted, _one might believe that they weren't inside an asteroid at all. No exposed rock. This room looks like it belongs on a ship._

The light, not strong but cast to the farther corners of the circle, had been deliberately made that way. A stronger light than this would have blurred the perfectly imitated details of the six wire frame holograms seated in six of the chairs, and the one petite woman actually there. Jennala Olian might have been there for reasons, but the other Shyronian councilors obviously had more important things to attend to.

_Yes_, the dark thought intruded long before the recalcitrant Admiral could banish it. _Important things like picking their noses and squabbling over political power. As bad as the old Earth governments supposedly were before the Masters took over. _If only to save face rather than for Jennala, he covered both his disdain and nervousness by setting his lips in a motionless line, not daring to move it in either direction.

"Admiral Heim Temeritus of the Exodus defense fleet", one of the five male councilors spoke up once the two beige-suited guards had taken their places at the back. "I take it to mean your mission was successful?"

"I wouldn't be standing here otherwise", he replied stiffly, and got a light chuckle from a few of them. Like it or not, these five men and two women were his superiors, the top of the governing body Shyron had adopted in order to spite the House system they had abolished. They had the final say over all military matters- not something he could say experience with Anno Domino had gotten him used to. The Four Devas answered to no one.

"Two of the new machines captured", the visibly senior woman across from Jennala appraised the files they had no doubt received regardless of their location. "A partial success, but, if I recall correctly, intelligence informed us there were three machines. Were they in error, Admiral?"

For a moment, Temeritus risked a cagey glance at his primary rival and most vocal critic on the council; the squat, big-chinned man known as Councilor Pietro Nakura. Nakura was staying silent for now, merely watching and waiting for him to slip up. _Did he put her up to this, forcing me to admit my failure before my successes?_ "Intel… Intelligence was correct, councilor. There were indeed three machines being ferried by the supply convoy en route to the Phobos shipyards. If you'd let me explain-"

"Please do", Nakura finally spoke up with an oddly merry tone unlike his usual blustery rattle. "Tell us how you failed to accomplish your mission and lost half the ships assigned to you when you had _absolutely no opposition_ to worry about."

_If you were here in the flesh right now, drunken upstart…_ Maybe he was just paranoid. Maybe not. _Maybe_ they had deliberately found reasons not to be on the asteroid colony upon his return, didn't dare deal with him face-face. "It was not so simple. While there was no standing opposition when we first arrived, there was an infiltrator aboard one of the machines. He activated the machine right as our shuttles were upon it, and battled our ships."

"_One_ machine?" The aged woman councilor who he'd analyzed before replied with polite incredulity. "Eight warships, and you ordered a retreat when confronted by one machine?"

"Calm yourself, Magda", black-haired councilor Jennala Olian finally spoke up casually, coming to Temeritus' defense like she always did. "We never received any specifics on exactly what these new weapons were like. We should not fault the Admiral for being cautious."

"Indeed", seconded Nakara with a small tip of his hat meant to make it look like he was on her side of the argument. "Rather, I am more curious as to the mention of _shuttles_ in your mission. Being a military man myself, I know of common procedure for a hostile boarding operation. Is it not always safer to use the war cruisers themselves to secure a target ship of equal size one wishes to capture?"

Temeritus gnashed his teeth vigorously behind the skin of his mouth. This was _not_ going to be good. "That boarding action never occurred, councilor. The three machines were adrift in space when we arrived, and our initial scan showed no lifesigns inside them."

Nakura could no longer conceal his smirk. "Of course. Perhaps Intelligence had lulled you into a false sense of security, so that you did not expect such an _obvious_ trap. I'll assume then, that you destroyed the enemy machine before it could interfere with your operation?"

_Tricky. Advancing the report along so I don't have time to explain that I was following the tactic the House of Peacecraft had planned with their agents before I killed them all. _"It was slightly more complicated than that. Before long, a fourth machine, similar to the ones I'd been ordered to capture but larger, arrived, and began attacking my ships as well. _That_ is how we lost the _Counterstriker_, honoured councilors."

They all seemed taken aback by that, even Jennala. He'd been equally as stunned- perhaps more so- after comprehending that a machine of such small stature could destroy a carrier fifty times its size with a single attack. He had harbored fears they might simply not believe him. "Very well", one of the older men with round glass specs and, oddly enough, a blue-dyed beard and sideburns, said. "After that, you wisely decided to cut our losses. What about the others?"

"I would think that obvious by the amount of wreckage this colony detected recently", Temeritus answered grimly. "Anno Domino valued these MS weapons quite a bit. They mobilized a decently-sized task force, headed by Admiral Landon, to block us. Both sides took losses, and although we were outnumbered worse than two to one, I can promise you that we inflicted far more damage upon them than they did on us. And Landon is now dead."

"Anno Domino can afford such losses", Nakura's grandmotherly female lackey now grumbled, as if the loss of one of the four Devas meant nothing. "We cannot. You were instructed to avoid provoking them. This is not a war."

_Not yet, it isn't. Only a matter of time. Deep breaths now. _"With all due respect, madam Councilor, we can't expect Anno Domino to take this brazen theft lying down. They only leave us be because we are so far away from the Earth, and ignoring them will not-"

"You overstep your bounds, Admiral", Nakura was overjoyed to point out. "We will decide when it is necessary to go to war with Anno Domino, if ever."

"As it is", bluebeard spoke up, clasping his stubby hands rather excitedly for his age. "We have captured two of the new weapons Daravon Engineering Systems was creating. Irrefutable evidence that Daravon is creating weapons without the consent of the majority of Earth's Houses. A major blow to their precious political stability even if we only had one machine! Therefore I would consider the Admiral's mission a success, albeit a costly one."

This was it, then. If he didn't bring it up before them now, any real work he accomplished with the new weapons would be illegal. "While we are on this subject, councilors. I would like to request permission to draft those two machines against Anno Domino for the time being."

Troubled looks were exchanged all around, and the blue-bearded Councilor spoke again, removing all prior traces of enthusiasm. "Would you care to outline that request in a bit more _detail_, Admiral?"

He knew it. He'd failed before he even got started. What his said now was wasted breath. "Yes, sir. I can now attest to the power of these 'Mobile Suit' weapons firsthand. They are the next step in the line of warfare our Valkyrie space-jets began... and it's a _big_ step. All I need is to requisition a few engineers for a few days' metalwork, I already have some elite pilots in mind for these."

"Were you not listening, Admiral?" another male councilor responded abruptly, this one with a glass eye and hazelnut dreadlocks. "We have no desire to make war with the vastly superior forces of Anno Domino. Furthermore, placing those two machines in danger is the last thing we wish to do- if we were ever to lose both, a grand opportunity would be gone."

"I concur, Schpariel", Nakura spoke, completing the trinity arrayed against Temeritus. "The captured machines will be kept out of the ready hangars. Keep them well guarded in the center of the Exodus colony. Anno Domino may have infiltrators there that will be ordered to destroy the evidence."

"But… sir!"

"That will be enough, Admiral. This meeting is adjourned."

He waited until the holograms had all faded, Nakura's last of all, but still wasn't sure how Jennala would react to a completely honest display of his anger. _The fools. These fools are throwing away the chance to use what may just be the greatest weapons of our time! They could turn the tide! I know they could!_

Concerned, and now out of the sight of her peers, Jennala cradled the Admiral's shoulder and propped his cap back up. "I know it seems stupid, Heim", she whispered to him affectionately. "I'm against it, myself. My dad was drafted into the AD Legion Corps on a trumped-up charge a month or so before we left, so I don't like appeasing those bastards any more than you do."

"Then _why_?" he asked her helplessly. "Why forego this chance?"

She locked into his eyes now, shifting back into the 'politician mode' that had gotten her to this position of power, reminding Temeritus that she was no longer a young woman. "Because I'm born of the House of Shyron. War is... just not the way we're used to doing things. Culturally, backseat political maneuvering and legality- lawsuits- is always the way to go for us. We would much rather let Anno Domino fall apart from entropy than blast it apart with guns."

"I'm starting to get that same impression", the admiral replied sheepishly, looking back at the empty chairs of leaders born not on the battlefield, but in the debating room. "But I think you underestimate Anno Domino's grip on things; this alone won't shake it. That's why I'm going to train my chosen pilots to _use_ those machines for when the time comes. I wasn't forbidden to do that."

Sitting up on the table, Jennala gave an amused chuckle. "Finding the loopholes in your orders, Heim? Maybe you're more like us than I thought."

He winced in mock pain to that. "Ouch. Seriously though, I have never been as impressed with a machine as I have with those suits. I don't think warfare will ever be the same again."

"Enough about warfare. You look tired. Perhaps a relaxing night at my place, instead of those crappy quarters you insist on sleeping in…?"

He laughed, easily seeing where this was going despite the fact that they were twelve years apart, and quickly assumed a badly overacted caricature of his own normally serious commander's voice. "I assure you, Miss Olian, the rumors that I sleep in my uniform are completely false."

"Excellent. Let's get it off then."

- - -

It wasn't long before Bryce was introduced to the entire Dellacroix family one by one, putting on as much natural courteousy as his grief would allow. Gabe's wife was Becca, a rather lean woman with tan hair and a modest limp Gabe had told him was the result of an accident out in the local asteroid fields. Even after that, she remained an explorer first and foremost.

It was the son, Jun Dellacroix, who had surprised him the most, however. While Jun's hair was both neater and a darker shade of red, in all other aspects he could have passed for a younger version of himself. He was also a talented hacker.

Even this surprise, however, was quickly pushed aside by the dull ache that had plagued him since arriving here. Once he was finally alone in a guest bedchamber, he closed the door tight before screaming his throat raw.

_She's dead. She's dead because of a machine I designed! And now thousands more are going to be killed by machines I created. DAMN IT! DAMN IT TO HELL!_

Once the pillows were shredded, he turned unnamable fury towards the walls, punching one straight on. It left no mark, but he now lacked the will to continue tearing up the room and collapsed on the bed. _It's my fault… **I'm** the one who designed the Mobile Suits in the first place. Everything's so clear now; I've seen the destruction they cause firsthand, so different from what I imagined. I **liked** seeing them perform well, for God's sake!_

Of course, that had been in the simulators, all the machine's targets were purely imaginary, theoretical. When the _Heaven's Gate _had been destroyed, however… it was as though he could feel those deaths with an unidentified sense. The barrier of naiveté he had woven over time along with the machines themselves was now smashed. By the same token, it would never again excuse him for creating killing machines.

_Not that it ever excused me, _he decided. Even knowing of the Masters and Anno Domino's true meaning, he had never treated organized Religion with too much credit- it was not God's judgment he sought to define, but his own. _I may hate this. I may feel like curling up into a ball and dying here, but… as long as the DES Peregrine, Rana, and Hyrcanian Gundams continue to murder people- as long they exist, I cannot go into what lies beyond in peace, knowing better than anyone else what they can do. They could slaughter tens of thousands if Anno Domino isn't prepared._

Bryce looked up from cot, noticed that the artificial light cycle had dropped to its lowest point. He'd been lying on that bed for at least six hours, despairing while drifting between sleep and alertness at random, beating himself up inside.

_There's only one course of action that can redeem this, _he decided vehemently, watching the lights drop further and further, placing the bright fields of day past him. _And it's not a joke._ Then he stood up in the bed and stared out the window while trying to reorganize the unrecognizable mop his hair had become, and put the shattered remains of his glasses somewhere safe.

_Could it work?_

- - -

Troy pored over the design specs on his computer glumly, for once unable to force merriness into his expression or playfulness into a jab at Umil's standard statue impression. Or even make the jabs at all. Morale, he knew, was at an all-time low with their chief MIA, and most likely dead.

The door to DES team 18's personal design lab in Hong Kong whooshed open, and for once Elya's presence was not announced by her pet Haro. Even the little AI seemed affected, as if it was sensing the team's moods. "No word?", were the first words out of her mouth before she face downed straight into the room's single plush couch.

"No word", he concurred brokenly. "They've only got scattered reports from the survivors of the battle, and they say Admiral Landon is dead. We know who to blame, this time." He quickly ducked into a corner to hide whatever undesirable emotions might force their way onto his face at the reference to Temeritus. "I've got the official contract from Bryce's dad in person. Seemed pretty shaken, but he said we should get started right away."

"_Troy_", she groaned from her spot imbedded in the couch. "The way I feel right now, I don't think I could design a paper bag. Leave it for tomorrow."

Objectively, he gestured to the screen before him. "R & D already sent us a few scratch designs. I picked one we haven't done before."

"Fuck Troy, I said leave it! I _really_ don't feel like designing another MS from the ground up right now!" She did not have to add 'not after our friend died in vain over them'.

Sagging for a moment, he cast a glance to Umil, who was playing the middleman between them, conveying his attitude through stance rather than words. On one hand, he seemed to imply, the task set before them was their job, even if DES did not have fixed shifts. On the other, any work done now would only serve to remind them of their chief designer.

_We have to at least try_, he thought, for the moment agreeing with Umil's normally utilitarian outlook… and feeling more than a bit thrown by just how much more this seemed to be hurting Elya rather than him. Did their own past together mean nothing at all? "Fine. _Fine_, then. Umil and I will do the outlining today, you can sit out. You only have to do one thing."

"What?"

"Get your face out of that couch. You have to name it."

While she did indeed extract her head and chest from the couch, Elya looked no better than before. Tears and dirt still stained her face. "Why?"

He sighed in exasperation, trying with all his might to rouse her by any means. "Am _I _the smart one now? All of us already chose a name, _remember_? I chose _Hyrcanian_, Umil chose _Rana_, and Bryce chose _Peregrine_. Now it's your turn. It's all I ask."

"I don't care. You choose."

"Well…"

"Oh, fine. Lazy Boy."

It took Troy a moment to figure she was not entirely referring to him or Umil. "Simply beautiful, Elly, that name's _really_ going to strike fear into Shyron military. I can see it now: 'Oh my GOD, it's the Lazy Boy MS! Watch out, it's going to sit on us and watch TV!' "

"Whatever."

_By the Masters, she is in a state. Didn't even giggle, and Umil did! _"Come _on_, El. You know that's not how it works. Do you think he would like seeing you this way?"

"If he was here, I'd ask him."

_Okayyyy… so much for the subtle approach. _Dropping any pretense at civility, he slammed both arms on the keypad just to draw attention, then rushed up to her color-drained face with a passionate flame of anger that was not entirely simulated. "Look, I won't pretend this doesn't hurt me too. But we barely knew the guy, really. We were together for what, the last two years of it?"

"Three years."

"Right. And most of that time, he spent working in private or cracking lame jokes whenever someone tried to get him to open up to us. Not nearly as long or well as we knew-"

The speed with which she rose to her feet made both boys back off momentarily. "If you think for _one second_ I am going to just _sit _here and take-"

A sharp trilling interrupted what could have been their third ever falling-out. Momentarily forgetting notions of grief and wrath, Elya turned and unzipped her pouch to produce her sky-blue Haro, which had both of the 'wings' atop it's spherical form raised alertly.

"Private communication from H-C329", she read aloud the video screen on the back, then frowned, forcing the wings closed and placing it on the floor. "Only a few people know my address. I wonder who…"

"Harooo!"

The blue AI's flexible wings, normally used both for hopping and to indicate when it had something to say or deliver to its owner, popped right back up in front of her surprised face. It then made a small leap down from her lap, and onto the input socket of the DES computer Troy had been glazing over designs on.

Then their late chief designer flickered into a faint existence on the flat screen just above the Haro. Without being prompted, Umil moved to turn the lights down so they could all make out more details. Bryce was not wearing his glasses or the DES jumpsuit he'd left them wearing. Instead, torn street clothes that offered no clues as to where he'd gotten them clad his tensed body mass. His background was likewise generic- a wall of corrugated metal and rivets.

"This message is intended only for DES Design and Production crew number 18", he spoke a tad solemnly. "That is, Umil Granq, Elya Proctor, and Troy Haliburton. I've sent it via a Communications Haro because I know that Anno Domino- and my father- monitor Daravon public channels closely."

None of them could manage any words yet, but Troy was the first to realize that their computer lab had two decent curved windows along its walls. Without a word, he gestured at Umil to move the couch before one and blocked the other by leaning against it.

"I thought I should tell you", Bryce was continuing, "that while I'm obviously still alive, my objectives have changed with new information. I won't force my new goals on you, I only ask that you listen and decide for yourselves what to do."

"Is he saying what I think he's saying?", Umil asked incredulously. "Do you think he's… switched sides on us?"

"Only bastards like Temeritus would do that", Troy quickly headed him off. "Just listen."

"Recent events have led me to understand that I've been living a naïve lie for many years", Bryce said, once again looking pensive. "Until now, I never really understood just how nasty these machines we've made are. Only after I saw them in action; worse than nukes. So before I can move on to anything else, I have to undo my past sins. I'm determined now, to make it so that no army or nation ever controls a Mobile Suit. They're too dangerous in the wrong hands, and the hands of nations can never be entirely trusted."

He paused for a moment, glancing slightly above whatever he was using for a camera and nodding. "So before I go, I ask that you do me one final favor. This message contains a computer virus a friend of mine created. It will have wiped out all of the data on my personal computer by the time you hear this. I ask that you destroy both of the portable disks I saved data on the MS to as two backups. I put the first one in my 2nd desk drawer down, and Elya, you know I gave the second one to you. Without that, it will take years to design and build a new one even if you decide to help them."

Recovering from the shock, Troy slid back into his swivel chair and tried looking at the designs they had been looking through before. At the very first keystroke, he balked at a red-lined 'Warning: This data has been corrupted and will be removed to safeguard the company mainframe' tag, followed by a blank menu.

"As for me, I'm going to destroy every Mobile Suit we've made, plus the big white one, and any others that are out there. I'll do it, even if you don't do as I ask, even if it takes the rest of my life." Then, as if removing a massive weight from his chest, he slid into a playful smile. "Troy. I know you're upset about breaking up the best comedy team in Daravon, but I've found a different calling- Destroy All Gundams Melee starts now. Peace out. Don't forget about me, because I certainly won't forget about any of you."

- - -


	6. Trust

Disc

Phase 06: Trust

- - -

_"I cannot be manufactured, bought, sold, found, or repaired. I am a more valuble substance than platinum or neutron energy, and yet I, like my opposite am more infinite than carbon atoms. What am I?" –A riddle from the archives of the lost ship_ Sanctuary

- - -

The color scheme of the Mobile Suit called _Rana_ contrasted sharply with the dusky red planet now spread beneath it. Spreading both arms, and the suit's by association, its pilot felt gravity's embrace with more than a little anxiety.

She was young for a military pilot. Her short, dark brown hair only avoided contact with the static-charged plastic helmet she wore due to it being fit into a ponytail of equal length dangling down the back of her beige flight-suit. As the stronger G-forces took effect, she could not help but wince at feeling the tail crushed by the rapid shifting of her back, forced into a hunched posture by her iron grip on the arm troughs as she wondered if she would ever get used to this new machine.

Finally, she opened her shaken eyes again and surveyed the approaching landscape beneath her on the mains screen. Nothing but red dust and the odd terrace appeared, prompting her to slide both legs forward with all her strength, desperately fighting the air resistance the whole way down.

_That would be a great way to land_, she mused to herself just as she completed the landing without error, thanks to the pressure-sensitive plates that encased her legs. _On this planet, it would do a lot more than just skin my knees to land with them outstretched._

"Nicely done, _Rana_", a voice issued not from her helmet or the machine's own systems, but from everywhere at once. "Any problems holding it steady?"

"No, surprisingly", she answered just as quickly. While she had spent enough time aboard Exodus colony to erase most traces of her Waltherian accent, a small hint of it's French origin always separated her speech from the ordinary men and women of Shyron. It was a little embarrassing, even if she knew it really shouldn't be. "The pressure sensors were an excellent idea- these arms and legs work almost like they're mine, but they're a bit twitchy."

"There should be a sensitivity control somewhere above the top window screen. Twist it to change the settings, but not now. Are you up for the rest of the exercise, _Rana_?"

Sure enough, if she craned her neck all the way back, she could make out a black foam-coated knob, poking out between the pressure pads. "Give me a moment."

She was able to spend a minute rechecking just how sensitive the machine was. The control stick of a Valkyrie jet did not require one to be aware of all their limbs at all times, whereas this 'Mobile Suit', as her instructors called it, would respond even if her legs or hands just idly drummed or tapped, or even if she turned her head or bent over.

Still, admitting that her vision was swimming before her even in the simulators would probably only be taken as a sign of weakness. It was a proven fact that several of the Shyron Valkyrie pilots resented her being one of the those chosen for practice exercises with Admiral Temeritus' newest toys, even if she was a better pilot than they. Hiding weaknesses and anxieties within, however, was something she had become an expert on.

"Xain's already started the second phase", her supervisor reminded her gently. "Hyrcanian has two confirmed kills with its artillery already."

"All right, fine", she blurted, inwardly praying that she hadn't called down too much of a challenge for an unfamiliar machine. Almost immediately, both sensors and sight saw a string of black dots against the Martian sky, translating into at least ten small aircraft of extreme fragility and speed. Underlining those were seven long treaded vehicles, each carrying a modest pair of LRAM missiles pointed diagonally to the sky above.

_Wrist-mounted laser scope rifle. EMS Head Crystal. Blast-resistant 'tower' shield, and a 'Beam Glaive', whatever that is. I saw many options on the real machines, but for now, best to stick with what I know._

Leaping behind a short ridgeline for a bit of cover, the long laser scope weapon flashed out of the left wrist guard and through the slit in the tall tower shield to take careful aim on the first aircraft like a modern sniper. "Fehn Bickham, _Rana_, engaging!"

- - -

Umil stood first, his normally flat-spread hair standing up partway in what under other circumstances would have been comical. "He's gone completely nuts", he spoke to the frozen image of their friend. "You both see it, right?"

Downcast from doubt, Troy instead turned and watched Elya's own reaction to the message. As the screen went blank and the Haro bounced back into her arms, she held it tightly as a precious jewel. "Stressed, maybe. But he knows what he wants to do. I think… that I, too, have lost the drive for creating lethal weapons, at least for now. We'd never succeed without Bryce anyway."

The short boy's face paled further still, realizing he was in the minority here. "You can't be serious! I suppose you want to go along with his ridiculous plan to destroy the backup data as well?"

_That one's a tougher decision to make_, Troy realized quickly, standing stock-straight. _We do that, we won't just get fired from our jobs at DES. More likely, we'll be put up on charges of collaboration, and I doubt we would be able to count on any compassion from Bryce's dad Jakob, or from Anno Domino itself._

"Umil does have a point here, El", he spoke up, stopping a blossoming argument between the other two; although it did feel satisfying to have her shouting at someone else for a change. "He's also requested our secrecy. We're supposed to destroy all design data on the MS, and then not say who told us to do it?"

Seeing the two boys now united against her, she rolled the blue Haro around in her palms for a moment, sparing them any more grieving venom, for once looking thoughtful instead of merely optimistic or pessimistic. "I guess what it all comes down to… is who we value more. Who's _trust _we value more, I mean."

"One person we'll never see again versus everyone who matters on Earth", Umil commented steely. "No question for me."

"That's right. You never liked him did you? Can't get over the fact that his dad-"

"Enough", Troy shouted, again breaking their animosity. "I believe the title is Supplementary Chief. I'm that, and I say this is too big a decision to make in one morning. Umil, can we trust you not to run screaming bloody murder to the closest Anno Domino officer during lunch?"

The younger boy was clearly taken aback, previously contented with the belief that Troy supported his view. Eyes downcast, he paused a long while before saying: "You can. I don't want to get in any trouble… but I don't want you to get into trouble either. I'll stay quiet until we've decided, but I can tell you now, _chief_, I'm not changing my mind on this."

"Same here", Elya piped up to Umil's face with equal determination. "I guess that leaves it to you- Bryce's _best friend_."

Troy's usual confident grin turned nauseous almost immediately. "Yeahhhh. Thanks for reminding me." _And here I was thinking being the number two guy was easy…_

He had a lot of thinking to do, and would not be able to eat anything until he was done.

- - -

"It worked beautifully, Admiral", Xain spoke to his uncle-in-law, unable to hide his excitement after the day's piloting exercises were one. "Six aerial kills, four ground kills before they got me... And that was only the third run!"

They were not, as his tone might have implied, standing in Temeritus' private office, going over the data gathered on the first day of simulations. Rather, the homespun room was conductive to a different form of exercise, as were the humble cloth robes both men wore. Temeritus had his back to his nephew, but was actually listening closely to his evaluation. Doubtless he would receive more from the surveying officers once they were done here. The other top-scoring pilot candidate, Fehn Bickham of the House of Walther, wouldn't say anything.

He secretly smiled. "Sounds like you had an active day. Do you wish to forego this week's session?"

Any exhaustion Xain Cartwright-Temeritus might have felt was swiftly stowed away during his reply. "I hope that was a rhetorical question, Admiral. I'm always ready!"

"Good. Stretching exercises first- those cockpits look quite cramped." With a look of obvious disappointment, Xain obeyed and lay down upon the straw yellow mat to test his arm and leg muscles. Having completed his first, Temeritus contented himself with simply watching the tan-skinned youth train his body, far younger and generally more fit than his own.

From the moment they had met each other, he could never be sure if the dirty blond-haired son of his sister, Illyana Cartwright, had forged ties with his uncle more out of true caring or a base desire to partake of the legend's experience, reputation, and skills. No doubt about it, he could see this boy was incredibly brash and stubborn. Loved to fly his Valkyrie with the fleet, liked to boast, liked to win at any combative sport. It was not really an attitude that had endeared him to many of his fellow pilots, and even Temeritus- his sole valid parent- would never have considered him for piloting one of the new machines, save for his scores hovering around at very top of his classes.

Working fast to get the stretches out of the way, Xain sat up and faced the Admiral with his arms and legs already poised. These weekly sessions of Jujitsu practice served as both a common interest and a means of rendezvous for someone with as demanding an occupation as the Admiral's. While he knew Xain would never fault him for such scant time for face-to-face talks, the back of Temeritus' mind never failed to obsess over the lingering fact that Xain had also never once called him 'Uncle', or even 'Heim'- always 'Admiral'.

He gave a slight respectful nod, getting himself ready as well and brushing his aging gray hair back. "Shall we trade?"

"You first."

_Confident. Is that more hot air, or has he been practicing up in secret? That would be just like him. I cannot help but be proud of him. _"As you wish."

In all truth, he did not truly care about being the 'winner' of their sparring, even if he was most of the time. Well, make that _all_ of the time. Exercise, enjoyment, and family bonding were his true goals here, and he let it show in his opening kicks perhaps more than was prudent. Xain parried them with both arms, and then, once he was sure his uncle was done, riposted with a hard, fast palm strike aimed for the chest. Blocking it just in time, the Admiral stifled a grunt and quickly backed away.

"Well met", he commented, lightly pumping his legs on the balls of his feet to warn Xain off. "Feels far more natural than missiles or lasers, wouldn't you agree?"

Xain simply shrugged. "It's all the same, though, in the end. One wins and one dies."

Temeritus frowned. "I would have thought your new war chariot might have served to instruct you in that regard." Trying for a foot sweep, he came up with a slash at the right shoulder seam at the last second, grazing his nephew's skin through the cloth. "A part of what makes them so formidable is their configuration, allowing the pilot to brachiate to their primal selves, which allows for the fastest reaction times humans can reach."

Xain didn't answer this at all, instead vaulting back to his feet and coming back with a series of wide swings, then closing for a quick snap-kick to the Admiral's head.

_Always aiming to kill, even in practice. My boy. __Can't deny it is worrying to see. _"In other words, the suits allow the pilot to control them using the actions that are most natural to them- the ones they have performed all their lives." Weaving with the blow, he crossed before Xain's thin limbs with one arm, creating a fatal distraction before jutting the other arm to his neck, aimed and pinning him to the floor by the neck in a single breath. "Yield?"

Just for a moment, a furious, animal-like snarl twisted the younger man's eyes and lips… but it deserted him just as quickly. "Y-yield." he finally conceded tamely. "I would much prefer to go for two more sessions please, Admiral."

_So he inisists on making it two out of three. Then three out of five, four out of seven, five out of eight, until he wins. _"In a moment, Xain. _I'd _prefer a moment of rest first. _Think_. Consider my words. Consider how natural it felt to move the _Hyrcanian_ around, to move its legs and arms like we just did now. You needed no buttons or switches for that. And that MS 24-G is the _heaviest_ out of the three machines."

"With good reason, Admiral", Xain admitted soberly. "I've never seen so much raw firepower on a machine of that size. May I ask… just who in Daravon designed them?"

- - -

"Hello, Professor Verne."

Trying his best to make the leather turquoise lab coat appear somewhat fashionable, Bryce looked at Gabriel Dellacroix and barked out a laugh. "Hiya. Is this really necessary? He _is _supposed to be pretty absentminded."

Exasperated by the boy's casual attitude towards what he was undertaking, Gabe fixed him with a dry gaze and held up the now-empty contact case as if brandishing a weapon. "You'd be surprised. All it takes is for you to mix up your new name and your old one _once_, and the jig's up. If you botch this, boy, well…"

Bryce shook his head, still trying to get his visual cortex more used to the colored contacts, small circular glass bits that changed his eye color from chocolate brown to a generic blue, as well as acting as a replacement for his glasses. Though such advances were now commonplace, he had preferred to stick with glasses up until now. Now, when he needed to look as little like himself as possible.

Mrs. Becca Dellacroix had anonymously cut his dark red hair into something narrower and older-looking, and he had grown a narrow trail of beard down the chin to add to it by refusing to shave. He had also- against all his misgivings- purchased a Haro that had caught his eye in the past few days, which possessed light-reflective plating that could assume all the colors of the rainbow depending on where you looked at the thing from. All of this, combined with the lab coat and bright DES paint tattoo upon his right cheek completed the picture of the false persona who was supposedly 30 years old, who had designed the Mobile Suits.

Reflecting on Gabe's words, he realized he was now facing something of the same situation their mystery infiltrator had about a week ago. If he was exposed, word of it wouldn't get back to Earth… but it very well might get back to this colony, exposing the Dellacroix family for aiding him in what Gabe had eventually determined a 'worthy' task.

"You're right, I'm sorry", he said, pulling himself up with some additional effort, even trying to walk and speak like he was eight years older than he truly was. "I know what it means if I'm caught by Shyron, and how much of this I wouldn't be able to do without your help, Gabe. Thanks again."

Seeing the rainbow-colored Haro Bryce had purchased and named Chameleon hopping around, triggered by its new master's enthusiastic remarks, Gabe shrugged. "Ain't nothin'. Worth it to keep big beasties like these out of dirty 'ands", he remarked, thumbing the fully repaired _Peregrine_ Gundam behind them in the bay. That, rather than the disguise, had been Bryce's contribution- no one else knew the inner workings as he did.

"If you don't mind my asking", Bryce continued uneasily, finally gathering the courage to broach the subject. "I'm grateful for your help, but I can't stop wondering why you haven't turned me in yet. To Anno Domino, I mean."

An explosion of laughter from Gabe, and he almost fell off the supply crate he was lazing on. "Would've thought you'd have figured it out by now, boy. As you've seen, Anno Domino in't very welcome in these parts. You know why we're out 'ere, don't you? Aside from the mining?"

He thought back to history for a moment and nodded, for a moment amazed that the seemingly touchy lenses stayed in place. "Yeah, I've heard about it. George Walther, a famous explorer. He used his powers as a Master to push the boundaries of known space past the Solar Barrier, even into other solar systems. In his name, you do the same thing."

"Right in one", Gabe noted, his voice now clearer and more focused than usual. "We're a nation of explorers by nature. We want no part of Anno Domino's crap, and one less weapon for 'em can only be a good thing. In fact…" But then his own head sank, a clear sign that he'd blithely stumbled into something of which he did not wish to speak.

He looked up to find a warm lab coated sleeve upon his big shoulder. "It's okay. We all have our secrets, and I'll take this one down with me. Your family is safe. A-hem… Professor Nirel Verne of Daravon, ready to takeoff."

Gabriel smiled, got off the crate, picked up and pitched a hapless Chameleon into the Mobile Suit's exposed cockpit all in one motion, whereupon the Haro settled underneath the left arm trough in contentment. "Go get 'em, kid."

- - -

Troy Halliburton had departed the DES corp. building in a thoughtful mood. Just as if Umil and Elya had somehow taken hold of either half of his brain, two voices were now at war with each other.

It might have been over already, with the less sentimental side victorious, if he didn't keep seeing familiar memories of their friend wherever he went. If he went to the fountain outside, he would remember how they helped design the thing to recycle the water it was given. If he occupied himself playing video games, he would remember the many rounds he had with Bryce in the two-player mode.

Finally, like an injured animal, he had made his way home. Well, not _his_ home- his waterfront home had been sold to a fishing company after his parent's death some 20 years ago. In return, the House of Daravon provided him with a single-person residence close to their building- functional, but nothing special. Nervously knocking on the door of a far more stylish household, he was secretly grateful to see Elya open it instead of her parents or older brother- he could easily see they were having dinner at the moment.

"Still can't decide?" She asked him cautiously after they had gotten a fair distance away, come to a bridge near her house. Unlike the morning, a great deal of the grief and anguish from earlier had been drained from her small frame… making it easier to speak his mind.

"I know the perils of sitting on the fence, so to speak", he replied, gazing out over the artificial water canal reflecting their visages. "Tried flipping a coin, but it's all in the bank at the moment. Tried rock-paper-scissors, but no one was here with me at the time."

She giggled inwardly at his false callousness, but was obviously still waiting for his answer. _Of course_ she was waiting for his answer. In a two-against-one, sticking to her veto was not an amiable decision, _especially_ after she had knocked out a young woman about her age, also claiming that their project had to be destroyed…

"It isn't just that, is it?" she asked him while this flickered through his conflicted head. "You're saying goodbye to him, because either way, we may never see him again. I'm scared, Troy."

He nearly aped his friend's trademark facepalm, realizing more and more things about the girl beside him now that he took the time to look. _Geez. She's kept her distance even as she admitted that. Still not sure if I've forgiven her for what happened before. _"It's okay, El. It's okay. Everything's gonna be fine."

Now looking as if she no longer cared about the decision, but about their own ties, she sniffed, dropping a small red stone into the canal like a prayer. "I've stared to realize how incredibly stupid I must have sounded, trying to leverage you into siding with me. I have a home and a family. Without Daravon's support, Troy… you're out on the streets of this city without any family at all. I'd never wish that on you."

"Not your fault", he said supportively, banishing the flash of a certain ship exploding under the _Blood Grudge_'s red-tined guns, the ship his parents had served upon… "To be honest, El, I hadn't even thought of that. I've developed a good rapport with the boss- Bryce's old man- but if I do this… that evaporates too. He'll never trust me again."

As if preparing for a grim pronouncement, she locked eyes with his own and anticipated the words to come. "Which is why…?"

"Which is why I remembered his other friends- the Anno Domino top brass. It's a lie, El. They were supposed to be a neutral peacekeeping force. They were supposed to mediate disputes and trade between the Houses of Birthright with complete _impartiality_. But… if that's the case, tell me why we always win?"

She could obviously think of no answer to that, looking instead at the houses and buildings around them, their lights painting the night sky with neon blurs. "We're on top of the food chain. Not many of the people here have a problem with that."

"I agree. Which is why _someone_ has to. Until the _haves_ also stand up, the Houses of Lurkveil, Aznable, Rosso, Peacecraft- the _have-nots_- get dismissed as just being troublesome."

_Head rush, man. This is weirdest date I've ever been on. _Part of him was amazed, alarmed at the words spilling from his mouth, as if someone else- Bryce? The spy girl? - Was now voicing his private insecurities through his mouth in greater eloquence than he could ever manage. _But do **I **believe it? Two young engineers… are we really ready to accept the consequences of opposing the House system? Betraying it as **Temeritus** did?_

_NO. _"I'm not saying we need to leave our homes, El. Just as you'd never ask me to forfeit my well-being, I'd never ask you to leave your family behind for anything. But maybe we don't need to leave Daravon to change it. I'm willing to try, if you are."

She stared at him, at her own reflection in both his eyes and the water running beneath their feet, looking awestruck. Then she laughed aloud. "I don't know if you're talking about Daravon or _us_ being together again anymore. Frankly, I don't care. So now…?"

He smiled, patting her shoulder. "So now, I'll have the second disk to go with the first?"

The fact that she actually had the second disk of the two- the source of her 'veto' power- dawning on her once again, Elya sheepishly bent over. "It's here somewhere."

"Check your boot."

"Mmm-hmm."

"Check your tool pouch. Check your other boot, too. I really meant both boots, but I didn't realize you wouldn't necessarily understand that."

She stopped and looked up, eyes showing mock incredulity. "You're trying to be obnoxious enough for both you and Bryce now?"

"Yes, that is the plan. Unless you'd be interested in applying…?"

- - -


	7. Defection

Disc

Phase 07: Defection

- - -

All at once, the touch of an unknown signal burst throughout Bianca Tanner's central nervous system. She could not tell where or why she was, only that the signal was the only thing that kept her from falling back into the folds of the deepest sleep she could ever recall experiencing. She struggled to make sense of colorful blurs coming to her eyes, of the vague sounds that occasionally reached her ears in the guise of words.

Hungry. So hungry. She felt numb throughout her body, possibly by what she imagined would be a very cold metallic pallet normally. Cold seemed to radiate from it along with the walls of the small room she'd woken up in. A medical ward, by the looks of it. Vision slowly clearing, she could make out two similarly-dressed people standing near the glass door, not unlike-

_Anno Domino officers!_

_Now_ she remembered. She'd been stuck in a far smaller chamber before, when Admiral Yamato had delivered news of her sentence, and then forcibly jammed a powerful sedative into her arm. She could have been out for weeks. Months, even!

"Don't blink", one of the blue-suited men was advising her. "Your eyesight needs time to refresh itself."

Of course, that was what they were doing by reflex action. She couldn't place either the voice or face, only knew that Yamato was not there, and neither were any of his black-suited troops, just two other officers, plus whoever was watching them from the transparency above and to her left.

Like the rest of her, her vocal cords felt sluggish from lack of use. "Where… How long… was I out for?"

"About five days", the helpful officer said. "It would have taken less time, but it's been so very long since we had one with a sentence such as yours. Like your senses right now, our surgeons had gotten sluggish from lack of use."

_Surgeons? Sentence? What…? _"What the hell is going on here?!"

The other officer was clearly older, had a gruff, atonal voice that sounded like a predator viewing prey. "To sum it up, petie… you're in the army now. I'm sure my friend Yamato explained the whole bit to you. He's _very_ serious about explaining it to new intitiates, heh heh."

She paused for a moment, both to get a better look at the two men, and to wait for the older one's echo to fade, leaving them in utter silence. The older man on the right was now visibly recognizable by his baton of rank as an Admiral, and Bianca projected the old defiance at him in her response.

"Then I guess Yamato never told you what I told _him_: I will NEVER join you!"

Before she lunged, Admiral Gisbourne nodded upwards at the one-way transparency above them, and a new sensation stopped the young woman in her tracks, instantly falling to the metal floor and clutching at her head.

The sensation was familiar in some ways, but at the same time far beyond any standard of pain she had ever established in her life. Feeling like it bloomed from somewhere in the forehead, it seared through her, turning any and all thoughts away from attacking the Admiral or escaping, and towards only what it would take to make the pain **stop.**

After a period of time indeterminable to the receiver, the searing feeling abruptly ceased, and she had to fight hard to breathe a most heartfelt sigh of absolute relief at her savior. Her savior, who was now grinning defiantly above her, knowing that she did not need any further clues to put the pieces together into a horrifying picture of the AD Legion Corps.

_Surgical implants in the temples beneath the skull_. _That_ was how they maintained control over hardened criminals, made them over into soldiers, by simply broadcasting a signal to the implants whenever any of them acted out of line. Every single one of Anno Domino's soldiers was a convicted criminal, cowed into submission by the basic language even the deaf and the blind could understand- the language of indescribable, irresistible _pain_.

While Bianca desperately hoped that one could accumulate mental resistance over time, in that first unguarded moment, she would have done anything, **anything** to make the pain stop. That shocked her almost as badly as the realization itself.

Gisbourne sighed as if he had seen this routine a thousand times- not an unreasonable assumption. "Come on now, girl. Enough melodramatics. We have a uniform and an electric razor with your name on it in the barracks. Would you care to lead the way?"

Gasping in short breaths, as though mustering the strength to resist agony incarnate, she stood nonetheless, radiating the utmost disgust. They _still_ didn't know her name, and now they were going to shave her bald. "_Alright_. You win… for now."

"Wrong, pet", the other officer gloated. "Forever."

- - -

Jakob Daravon's latest meeting stood apart from the countless others he had experienced in more ways than one. For starters, he was the one who had called it, for once feeling an overwhelming need to compare notes with his primary benefactors- the top brass of Anno Domino.

He had also not attended many meetings held in the very core of said army's base of operations, the Lunar base on the moon. This room, hidden beneath the normal security of the more 'public' meeting room, held ten cushioned chairs encircling a disproportionately long black table. Jakob could easily notice that this room held no cameras, and required not one, but _two_ ID codes of an Admiral or higher to even open the soundproof door.

Lastly of all, he had never before been forced to present Supreme Commander Lore Golavinsky with bad news.

One by one they filed in, taking seats not too near but not too far from the boss. Admiral Gisbourne, bearing a modest head and chin of olive-colored skin, topped by hair obviously dyed shiny silver. His fellow Deva, the spiky brown-haired Yamato, still the youngest of those gathered here today even with their newest addition… Admiral Aron Defoe, who sported a wild mane of hair a darker shade of brown than Yamato's, and a squinty look that easily conveyed his nervousness at being here.

Then there was the only other man beside himself not of military background, and the only one who did not require a chair. Premier Kagebarai Orpheon sat as he always had- in the hovering construct created by his own hand, to support both his crippled legs and his aging body. The wispy, dark purple-haired leader of the House of Orpheon's skills were no surprise considering the nation's specialty in neural computer uplinks. Jakob inwardly suspected that before long, Premier Kagebarai- as he preferred to be called- would have to install a voice box on the hover chair to convey his words as well.

That left only Supreme Commander Golavinsky and himself. Easy to forget about the latter given the state of things, but no one would soon forget about their boss. Former Russian war hero 'Golav' was the oldest next to Kagebarai among those present, his naturally silver beard and hair flowing together with the rest of his pale face to convey degrees of harsh wisdom, if not compassion.

"If everyone is settled in", Golav spoke slowly, focusing on the two civilian leaders, "I would think a refresher of purpose is in order."

Alternately eager to get it out of the way and dreading a possible backlash, Jakob nodded both to the Supreme Commander and his business partner Kagebarai, then cleared his throat. "Yes, commander. I bring Anno Domino news that may affect your future plans in many regards. I'm sure everyone here remembers the joint venture of our nations known as the Ignition project, and it's offspring, the FATE Equation Project."

Golav inclined his head accommodatingly. "Few of our special projects have been of greater secrecy. For those who haven't heard the latest, Shyron started its recent military resurgence by capturing two of the units promised to us."

"Captured?" Kagebarai let his wisened eyes convey the emotions his vocal cords no longer could. "That is difficult to believe. Did we not agree to disguise the shipment as a normal supply convoy? Those machines were carrying some of our most advanced and expensive neuro-computers, Daravon."

"However it may have happened", Bryce's father pushed forward gravely. "That mishap has now been compounded. A few days after, the last machine disappeared as well, along with my son, the chief designer."

While Golav received this news in silence, the rest of them did not seem nearly as stoic, quickly shifting glances and unpleasant mutterings upon each other, but mainly directed at the two civilians. "So you are saying your own son stole the last one", Kagebarai observed bitterly. "Any particular reason _why _he betrayed five years funding and private work, or is he merely a completist?"

No one laughed. Jakob studied the table closely as he gaged his reply: "It may have been possible… that he wished to save Edwina, bless her heart, who, against my orders, decided to supervise Admiral Landon's last battle."

"Landon is dead", Yamato noted sadly, also staring down at the table. "Only six ships of the expeditionary fleet survived, and they confirmed it. But that still doesn't explain why the last machine would also be placed into the hands of Shyron."

_WHAT? Impossible! _"That's…. I find that highly unlikely. May I ask where you received word of this?"

"From our cell of infiltrators aboard the Shyron Exodus colony", Golav answered him crisply. "They spotted the third machine coming in, although they could not make out the pilot. I've already ordered them to set in motion plans to retake or destroy them. You understand why, do you not?"

_No… My son... my son… what have you done?_ "Yes", Jakob stammered helplessly, "but I would _greatly _appreciate viewing the actual evidence. A clip, perhaps?"

But Kagebarai shook his withered head in condemnation, moving the chair portion of his hover-sled into a steeper angle with the push of a square button. "The spies would not transmit visual files over encryption frequencies, Jakob. It makes them too easy to intercept. All we have is their word, is that correct?"

"If it makes it any easier, Daravon", young Yamato said earnestly, "We only recently received this information. It is not yet confirmed. And your son may not be responsible for this."

_Yet I know he is alive, somewhere. His team's last report was… strange. Different. _He managed a weak smile for the meeting's sake. "Thank you for that, Admiral Yamato. At the same time, I bring other news in regards to this project. I've received the preliminary design reports from the original team. However, it also came with a request for job transfer. With a different DES team running it, creating new Mobile Suits from scratch may be more difficult than the first time around."

"It seems this project has met with setback after setback", Gisbourne commented darkly. "First the disaster with the original prototype- the one we originally _found_ for you, and now this treachery."

For once, Jakob could not hide his outburst. "If you mean to imply that _my_ nation, _my_ people-"

"-we have paid exorbitant amounts of money for-"

"-have never needed them before, and-"

"-I do not rule my people through fear-"

"ENOUGH!!!!!"

For once united as one body, Yamato, Gisbourne, and Jakob all looked up at Lore Golavinsky's now-foreboding gaze. "Ill fortune should not be blamed upon ye who suffers it", the Supreme Commander quoted bitterly, actually scaring the three men back into their seats with his drill sergeant's bark. Calming himself down now, he returned to his seat at the head of the table. "We did not come here to bicker amongst ourselves as the old Masters did. …Premiers Daravon and Orpheon. Do you honestly believe that these new weapons are worth continued effort to produce?"

Jakob scratched his chestnut beard, shot a wary look towards Kagebarai Orpheon's withered body. The truth of that answer not only hinged upon whether or not he could find someone as talented as Bryce, but whether or not old Kagebarai's nation could- or _would_- produce more top of the line neuro-computers to install within them. The other leader seemed to sink in his brown, cracked skin for a moment, than rewarded him with a slow, silent nod of approval.

"I believe so, commander", Jakob replied slowly, breathing a silent toast to the House of Orpheon and its leader. _Kagebarai's going to find a little present from me coming into his country tommorow. Two-thousand crates of lumber, I think._ "I've already requisitioned another team, along with the single remaining member of DES Team 18, to begin work on them."

Still unsatisfied, Gisbourne harrumphed enthusiastically in his seat. "Why use a rookie team? Just force the damn slackers back to work on it. I'll even give you one of my units to guard them if you want."

Jakob managed a fake-nice laugh at the 'generous' offer. "Well, we… we, we don't do that kind of thing. At least _I_ don't. Besides, without my son… the real genius of that team is lost. Team 14- Dr. Mandell's group- is almost as good. _And_, in order to speed up the process, which I believe is now more important for us now than before, I had planed to _reduce _the construction time put into individual models and neuro-computers. As a result, these Mobile Suits will not be nearly as powerful or agile as the specimens we have just lost… but capable of mass-production. I can guarantee you we will have the first batch shipped out to you inside a year, and many more after that."

"That's very generous of you", Defoe approved, as if desperate to actually say something in his nervousness. "You were right to think that information has an effect on our future plans regarding the House of Shyron, correct?"

"Agreed", Golavinsky said. "If the specs on the initial machines are correct, Shyron will gain a decisive firepower advantage over us if they are able to use the three captured Mobile Suits before we have some of our own. Therefore, I move that we merely sit back and defend all of our current territory, continuing the buildup of ships and troops for striking at Shyron's colonies until this project bears fruit."

Yamato agreeably raised one hand out as if gesturing to the very planet they orbited. "In any case, Commander, it's a proven fact that we are experiencing a larger amount of civil unrest on Earth than the usual, particularly in the South American nations. We can't tell what's causing it yet, so we may need to keep our troops at home. Once we have the counter to their Valkyrie jets, the destruction of the House of Shyron can serve as a harsh example to the rest."

"Very well. All in favor of this plan?"

He waited expectantly for a moment, and it still took Jakob a moment to remember that Golav's ruling was not a complete veto. Being a unique military organization that existed independently and answered to no government, the top brass of Anno Domino all had a say in their actions. Lore Golavinsky was the highest-ranking officer, but his support constituted only a quarter of the majority of the group. Before long, Admiral Yamato had raised his hand in favor of restraint, and Defoe had seconded him. Kagebarai watched the proceedings with unreadable eyes, recognizing the one aspect of the command structure that even influential House leaders such as themselves could not yet affect.

"Motion approved", Golavinsky said at last. "And thank you for bringing this matter to our attention, Daravon."

- - -

In these very same minutes, a single star separated a similar meeting held beyond the Solar Barrier from its opposite. A semicircular table instead of rectangular, held in the core of an asteroid instead of the center of a steep lunar crater. Nearly all of its occupants were hologram instead of flesh.

Yet for all it's differences, this meeting was also caused by a Daravon.

The seven seats here were limited to councilors only, so Admiral Temeritus managed only to survey the meeting's focus leaning upon a wall, one of the few genuine asteroid walls in the core of Exodus. Contemplating exactly what would happen if he sat down 'inside' one of the static holograms was pushed aside for now- this time, someone else, someone much younger, was on the stand.

"Yes, my creations have SPS homing devices within them", the man in the turquoise lab coat was explaining to the assembled council. "Using my personal vessel, I tracked the Mobile Suit _Peregrine_ to where its pilot had laid up for repairs, and killed him."

The elderly lady councilor known as Magda nodded, seemingly quite taken with this red-haired vagabond who had identified himself as Professor Nirel Verne, the listed creator of the Mobile Suits. Quick action by the local sensor officer had saved both him and his ride from being blasted into atoms by Exodus' huge defensive turrets. Looking back now, Temeritus was still unsure if that officer had made a mistake in letting the council hear him out.

"Which brings us to your motive", Jennala Olian said, clearly as suspicious of this odd turn of luck as the Admiral. "You were one of the greatest minds in Daravon. Why do you wish to join us, Professor?"

_Yes_, Temeritus thought, automatically leaning in closer, _this should be most interesting._

Verne sounded as though he had recited the words before, but that was hardly a reason for doubt- he might very well have, knowing the suspicion Shyron would treat him with. "Because Jakob Daravon and his ilk have no respect for the cutting edge of science. He fired me, you know. After _ten years_ of loyal service, of-of-of _impeccable_ workmanship, the bastard chose to treat the incident as though it was my fault!"

Several of the councilors now leaned back in their seats. They hadn't been expecting such emotion as the reason for Verne to betray his own people, but now that they knew the reason, it was old hat. The blustery professor seemed to perfectly fit into the stereotype of the mad genius obsessed with his own brilliant work, his glossy blue eyes shaking as if someone had plucked him right from a sci-fi movie.

"So I left Earth", he continued, still keeping a healthy tone of anger with him. "My future lies wherever my creations are used and appreciated, and now you possess the entire set. I only wish to see the day when that Daravon regrets ever defying me, when that… _primate_ becomes the victim of the very machines I built for him!"

Jennala could not help but look a bit amused by the man's livid ranting, but quickly schooled her attractive face into a businesslike, unreadable expression. "That will be satisfactory for now. We will, of course, undertake a fact-finding mission to ascertain if what you speak is the truth."

"But until then, professor", Pietro Nakura took over with his deep basso voice, "we welcome you into our defense fleet, in hopes that yours may be the first of many defections brought about by our quest for the truth. Your arrival is a watershed for us."

Verne's reaction was something like triumph. "Thank you very much, councilors. I guarantee you won't be disappointed."

Nakura smiled back with equal enthusiasm- perhaps he truly _did_ believe Verne' story to be the real deal. _Idiot._ "The Admiral will show you to your civilian apartment on the top level."

"WHAT?!"

Verne and Temeritus stared at each other. Both had spoken the word with a start, the by-product of shock. Seeing Verne allowing him room, Temeritus spoke up first, but words wouldn't come out of his gaping throat- he could not yet articulate his surprise at being snubbed like this.

"If you would, Temeritus", Magda regarded him scornfully. "We have other matters to discuss that we prefer to keep private. Escort our new friend to his new home. Professor?"

"Oh, nothing", Verne replied, a far cry from his earlier indignation. "Just a bit thrown by the change of space. I had a summer villa back on Earth."

"Yes", she chuckled lightly. "But I'm afraid Exodus Colony was built for function, not comfort. If that will be all…?"

Temeritus could not stop himself from glaring hard at the young scientist, expressing his own anger at someone who did not yet deserve it. _Greeter duty. That's what a warrior like myself has been relegated to now. Fucking Nakura. Save for Jennala, none of them trust me anymore…_

_But that could change. _It could change indeed, if he was the one to catch what could be in reality a most-convincing spy red-handed. Walking out the door, he resolved to bite the bullet and simply _watch_ Verne for the next few weeks.

_Sorry friend, but you're my ticket back to this council's good graces…_

- - -

Leaning up inside the large window space, Bryce surveyed the blank white quarters he'd been given with a satisfaction he found rather difficult to classify. Only after several hours of work had he been able to accurately isolate each of the hidden cameras and sensors in the room, and deduce where their blind spots were. His turquoise lab coat lay rumpled on the bed, and his pitifully few possessions, including Chameleon, had now been unpacked and activated.

_Now, for the first time, I have my own place. I wonder if this is what my father pictured._

He and the little rainbow-skinned Haro were now surrounded by hundreds of thousands of people and machines and buildings who opposed the system of authority he had grown up under, the sole operative in an entire city of enemies, a freelance agent in every definition of the word, with no resources but his own. No surprise that he felt a little lonely.

He spread-eagled dreamily for a moment, finally mustering the effort to get to work. Even whispering the plan to Chameleon would likely be overheard, so he brought the tiny AI up on the bed to manually enter his instructions, including the password that safeguarded the Haro's true functions, into the interface on its back while he thought of them.

_Step One: Reconnaissance. I have to learn where the MS units are kept, how to be stealthy, and how to fly them out of here on short notice. Thankfully, 'Professor Verne' would be expected to want to check his new surroundings, and you can explore the security areas once I'm done reprogramming it for my needs._

_Step Two: Tools. I need to find the means to destroy the inert MS once I find them. Bomb components would be preferable. Probably need a gun as well, just in case. I'll have to wait for security to become more lax before I go asking around for that kind of stuff…_

_Step Three: Training. From what I've seen, Shyron's combat simulators aren't too bad. I'll need much more training with the Peregrine to have any chance at defeating the Alpha Gundam with it afterwards._

Stopping there, he looked up at the sheet metal ceiling. _White… it would have to be white. I wonder… what if the Alpha shows up here and starts destroying things? More specifically, **everything**? Should I warn the Shyron council about it?_

He laughed at his own absurdity. _They are still my enemies. And they wouldn't believe me if I told them. Besides, what could they do? As powerful as my three are, that one…_

Figuring out that Mobile Suit's weaknesses, as well as how to exploit them, would have to be strictly theory without the actual machine present. It would take a great deal of time, and that was something he had run out of for today. Feeling the familiar strain of tired joints, he whispered 'nap time' to Chameleon, watched the tiny Haro close its wings and switch off, then surrendered to the temporary abyss of sleep.

- - -

**Target detected at 602x, 187y, 548z. Engage?**

_Where is he? Why has he not triggered the equation again?_

The voices again. A mesmerizing gospel chorus. They never stopped, and without them he would feel doubly alone. The target was not the little one who had triggered the equation twice before, but a simple little colony lying on the borders of what the _Alpha_ Gundam's pilot would later find out was Shyron's territory.

Laughter. Mad, heedless, jackal laughter. The voices spoke to him. They told him the little worms who lived on the Eurasia colony had already seen him, had already scrambled a few of their little ships to try and stop him.

Why would they try to stop him? Did they not understand that the gospel voices always told him how to avoid their attacks, how to kill every one of them without getting hit once?

Evidently not. "Drop your weapons and surrender your craft", a stern, serious voice broke over the comm.. unit, issuing from one of the small ships as far as he could tell. "You have ten seconds, then we will open fire!"

Laughter over the channel. The Valkyries did not visibly react to it, but scattered in a panic when the _Alpha_ vaporized their squad leader in a single shot.

Maeyuwa Iji Sinji Te no Kani 

_Nemuri O Mawari_

_Iji Kanji You Yamete O Ga_

Four missiles fired. Dodge, dodge, dodge. Three more shots, three more expanding clouds of debris. Laughter filling the headsets of the survivors, causing several to break off out of sheer terror, leaving him to look upon more interesting prey.

Civillian ships. Only a few had believed the Mobile Suit to be a threat to their guardian force, and only a few had gotten their private yachts out in time. The pale white Gundam callously flitted among the craft, blowing holes in one, slashing another into bits.

More speech over the channel. Equally serious, but this time pleading, begging teary-eyed for mercy. For a just a moment, he stopped short. "Tell me. Where is the other half? Why has he not contacted us?"

"What? I d-don't know what you're talking about. Please, for the love of God, stop destroying-"

Laughter. "Too bad for _you_ then! Bye-bye!" Beam whip straight through, no more yacht.

**Five Valkyries launched from War Cruiser at point 605x, 187y, 548z. Engage?**

_Boring. They are not the other half, the little one. But still better than these dullards. Engage._

The hypnotic chanting again, overlapping his banshee laughter so it did not terrify its own source. But only he could hear it. For the victims, for the psyche of all those on the Shyron War Cruiser, there was no refuge.

- - -


	8. Infiltration

Disc

Extra Warning: This Chapter has a scene some may find disturbing for its brutality.

**Phase 08: Infiltration**

- - -

For the tenth time in as many days, the dark ebony coverings slid upwards into their housings, piercing Bianca Tanner's eyes with the pale glow of moonlight.

She groaned softly to herself. She no longer welcomed the day. Not after what she had experienced.

What she now considered to be Anno Domino's darkest secret was a nearly foolproof system of control. As she had found out, the great majority of Anno Domino's black-suited ground soldiers were hardened criminals cowed into obedience by the threat of pain. Either a remote held by an officer, or a dull gray military Haro was the trigger to their torment, fed the signal via a large satellite array right here in the lunar base.

She'd seen it personally- rows upon rows of satellite dishes outside the base, each one for a different regiment of 200. The control was more refined than that, however. On the third day, she'd learned the hard way that the trigger could target units or entire regiments as well as individuals. Peer pressure from soldiers who didn't want to get zapped because of their teammates' disobedience was the second half of the trap.

If given half a chance, the men she'd been working with would cheerily slaughter their tormentors with the weapons they had been given. After ten days, Bianca could not say she had not felt a bit of that desire pushing against her training as well, if only to repay them for the indignities of an unwilling soldier in an army she hated more than ever.

Far worse for her than for the men here of course, was the imposed shaving of all head hair. The bespectacled barber placed in charge of it seemed oddly sympathetic towards someone losing so much of it, but she still cried out to him every time a big piece was cut, making him take it very slowly. Even now, each gust of cool air blowing on exposed scalp made her feel naked and vulnerable.

Then there was the suit. Black as night. Hard. Corrugated. Devoid of a nameplate. Form-fitting to an extent, but still the smallest size they had in stock by necessity. The best one could say was that it did its job- the hard bumps were part of a mesh that could stop most bullets and bleed off the heat of a small laser beam. It was also _impossible_ to sleep comfortably when lying down in it. Cots were provided, but most of the bases' garrison wisely opted to sleep sitting or standing, said it was good for the spine.

Now that the thrill of her temporary victory had worn off, there was the issue of her 'peers'. While it was true that the pain seemed to frighten them more than it did her, this was also a double-edged sword. Pressure from the unit and several strange looks from some of the ex-crooks made it clear most did not think too highly of their newest recruit.

Not that she ever wanted to be popular among people like these. _The victory, have to hold onto the victory… and get moving to this morning's exercises before someone forces me._

The practice range lay divided into a dozen elongated shooting galleries, each projecting featureless red targets against a thick concrete backstop. The room was wisely devoid of windows, and, despite its lack of décor, always provided an oddly satisfying experience. She had to take what she could get.

They had forced Bianca into an army, but they still couldn't get her to fire a real gun, even in practice. That was her sole victory, and she thanked whatever part of growing up in Peacecraft was accountable for it. In her opinion, seeing the disgusting Admiral Gisborne steam openly at her resistance on the sixth day had been _totally _worth the head-splitting pain that was his revenge. Resisting the commands hurt, sure. There was an approximate limit to how much her body could take in a given day. She exercised that allowance every chance she got- like shopping back home, there was always a limit to skirt around.

Today, after flippantly frustrating the local officer in the firing range, she saw what would happen if one was to overspend that allowance. The man in question certainly didn't just go broke.

Pushing through the modest crowd in the exercise room, she saw Gisbourne's familiar shape stooping over a relatively elderly guy who's nameplate read _Olian_, whom she recalled as being one of the nicer ones among the unit. She couldn't find out what his offense to the Admiral was, but Olian thrashed and gasped all the same, lacking the energy to scream. Bunched up alongside her, the others were transfixed, for once unified in their horror at seeing the old man shaking, then wailing progressively louder, seeming to expand his magnitude with the tremors that shook his stunted frame.

Then his skull implants overloaded, and she looked away along with half those present to avoid seeing the result. She was all the way back in her sleep-hole before allowing tears of anguish to surface for the first time in many days. _Barbaric bastards. I've got to get out of here, somehow…_

- - -

That the ventilation ducts filtering air throughout the Exodus colony's base were too small for a human to fit through was one part of a wealth of information that Chameleon recorded with its small pinpoint eyes, hiding within those same ducts. _Nothing yet._ _Harooo._

As its owner had privately guessed, security was not even close to the standards set by Shyron's enemies. While it was true that there were bored-looking guards in tan uniforms stationed at each entry and exit to the main chamber, the few cameras there were obvious and easily avoidable. So unlike the records the tiny AI held of an Anno Domino base, which was constantly patrolled by both its 'rehabilitated' soldiers and dull-gray military Haros acting as mobile cameras, reprogrammed, utterly devoid of any of the bouncy cheeriness common to the line.

Not that Chameleon could consider itself common anymore, either. The young man it knew only as User Daravon had spent several nights in a row carefully hotwiring and editing its programming in secret. While it did still possess memories of it's base template, it also conformed to the new intelligence it had been given. That other persona was far too noisy for its assigned task. Hiding in the vents, Chameleon did not make a sound, passively recording the names of personnel as they passed by.

Then came one it had not seen outside of the training lounge or lunchroom. A female pilot, deceptively slight of appearance for one of her profession, with sandy brown hair narrowing into a ponytail halfway down her back, which dangled limply as she walked. **Identify: Shyron Flight Officer Fehn Bickham**. An elite pilot, chosen for something the base computer had tried to disguise as a Valkyrie exercise, but was far too prevalent in her schedule to be merely that.

Along with a reduction in conspicuous displays of camaraderie, Owner Daravon had given the rainbow-tinted Haro a bit more in the way of imagination and deductive prowess than its template program. It waited a handful of seconds, then calculated an 89.5 percent chance that Fehn Bickham was one of the pilots learning to use the Mobile Suits. With a slight movement of the wings, it bounced back into the depths of the vent to make its way to the city level.

This information, it was certain User Daravon would wish to hear firsthand.

- - -

"Shall we trade?"

"You first."

Satisfied with the reversal, Xain Temeritus bowed, then aimed both hands for his uncle's face. While unprepared for such a crude move, Heim managed to roll out of the way and flip back to his feet before the follow-up. Xain's next kick met air, and the one after that two dusty forearms gripping it tightly, then flipping it so that the youth fell to the mat.

"So", the Admiral said, helping him up. "How is the new machine coming along, the one Professor Verne gave to us?"

Xain looked as though he wasn't sure if he wanted to try a strike at Heim's ribcage or not, then decided against it. "A bit twitchy. But it's a lot more like my usual than _Hyrcanian_… yes, I think this one will work out better in the long run."

"Good. One too many changes, and I was afraid the word would spread farther than it has to."

Pausing and kneeling to try and examine the balls of his feet, he sounded surprisingly interested. "What about our erstwhile 'donor', Admiral? I'd heard we would be having more defectors recently thanks to the evidence, but… do you trust him?"

The older man's gaze immediately darkened. "Only far as I could throw him, to use a tired cliché."

Amused, Xain shrugged casually. "You threw me two meters across this very room a month ago."

"Yes, but you know what I mean. Data on his activities before leaving Earth is thin. Suspiciously thin. Intelligence was at least smart enough to bug his quarters, even if that hasn't turned up anything yet. All we found installed on his pet Haro was Star Viper 4 and... _Tetris_."

"Heh. It's not as though he would spend lots of time out smelling the flowers, sir. Old guy pretty much keeps to himself in the lounge and mess."

Temeritus laughed. " 'Old guy'? The records say he's 30, only nine years older than you. What does that make me, I wonder?"

His nephew backed off, for once at an embarrassed loss. In fact, Temeritus realized just then that Xain had no idea of his true age, and silently motioned for him to take a guess grinning like a Cheshire cat.

"Er …Forty-ish?"

He snorted. "Try again. I wasn't an Admiral when I was twenty, my nephew. That takes time and effort and pure luck, no matter how skilled you are. For the record, I'm 51 and counting."

"B-but your hair…"

As if only noticing it now, he now idly toyed with his 'do, trying to use his hands for a poor-man's comb. "It used to be _much_ longer. What is that old phrase used by Daravon and Aznabilian artists? Oh yes, a 'bishounen'. A 'pretty' man. Such young men cannot easily enforce authority, however."

Feeling a warm light shining through the window and off his own blond hair, bleaching it nearly white, Xain nodded slowly, understandingly. "I'll keep that in mind. In any case, my arms are getting cramped. Are you going or not?"

Temeritus nodded back somberly. "If there is one thing I know you dislike, it is hearing old fools prattle."

Xain seemed extremely surprised by this, but still managed to block the older man's opening salvo and spinning foot sweep, at the end of it barely dodging a rising kick with the other leg that was, like Xain's earlier grapple, not in any classified book of the fighting arts.

"I-I don't think you're a fool, Admiral. Just the opposite."

Temeritus faced him with mirth, but still had one palm outstretched and pulled taut to fend off a surprise attack. "Am I? Humbleness is a rare virtue indeed, dear nephew. There are times when I might say _yes_. Times when I regret the decision that launched me down this path." Another short, frenzied exchange later, he continued speaking as if nothing had happened, even though his left hand was throbbing. "More often now, than before. The Council no longer trusts me, a non-Shyronian."

"If I were to want for old fools", Xain reassured him in a tone sounded incredibly sincere compared to his usual self-appreciation. "They are the ones to which I'd speak." He did not have to mention just how certain he was that none of the folk in question exercised their minds and bodies like this every week.

His uncle smiled in appreciation, and showed it by giving Xain moments of what _he_ always wanted out of these sessions- brutal hand-to-hand combat exercise with nothing held back. "Not many would agree with us. And rightly so."

With a doubly solemn look coming onto his face, he deliberately pushed his limbs free of their entanglement, wrenching them to clear the cramps but keeping the youth's focus on him. "Xain. I figure I've been blabbing on because, like with Captain Parker, I no longer trust myself to make unilateral choices. To be blunt: How would you like to have an aunt? An aunt who was also a Shyron Councilor?"

If non-combat knockdowns counted, Xain was sure he'd chalk up yet another one for his uncle. He stared back, wide-eyed, trying to make sense of the man's words. "You don't mean… you... with Councilor Olian?"

Eyes closed, the man nodded in a trance of mental pleasure. "Tommorow will be our tenth correspondence. Despite our notable age differences, she remains to this day the only Councilor I can truly understand. But more than that: she knows me; perhaps better than I know myself. We've known one another since 20 years ago, during the exile, when she was only a wide-eyed little adolescent ensign aboard _Blood Grudge_… and now, it seems the student has risen above the teacher. She is both beautiful and wise. _And_ she is interested in me."

_The greatest military mind in history for an uncle… and now the smartest politician in all Shyron as well? _"You _do _realize that most will view this as a transparent play for political power. It's practically the only reason our people ever _get_ married." He said this both out of honest disgust, and a certain measure of despair for his own prospects, considering his career.

"I don't give a damn what they think", Temeritus told him. "All I care about is your future, Jennala's company… and just maybe, building a brand new life to replace the one on Earth that I discarded to sate my beliefs."

_To sate your beliefs…?_

For once, Xain was not eager to hurry into the closing exercises before the afternoon's end. He had too much to think about.

- - -

"Maximum range in 5 seconds, Chameleon. Here goes... 3… 2… 1…!"

"Hadooooo!"

Bryce's head snapped up, and instantly went to the business of aiming for each simulated target in the valley. These ones were tanks- some of the last kinds ever created before Shyron's grand exile. Unlike their technological ancestors, the model M140-2 'Bishop' bore a very smooth, rounded chassis over its narrow treads, which ended in a single, fully rotatable turret at it's top, while a blister of bronze armor at the back hid the actual pilot's seat. As a whole, the unusual chassis made the tanks look a bit like malevolent saltshakers.

Of course, that was only his forcedly whimsical interpretation. Even in simulators, he'd never actually seen the caramel-colored Bishops in action, until now.

Neither human nor AI wasted any time- as a score of the tanks broke over the ridge, the plasma buster arm erupted it beneath them, upsetting two off their grips while the rest retained their balance. Before he could get the Vulcan gun in the other arm in line though, one tank snapped off a shot that messily blew the weapon from his grip, giving the rest of its column time to advance down the rocky trail.

Okay, if that's the way you want to play it… 

Closing both wings about the body as protection from shells, he surged forward into the greatest number of them with beam daggers drawn. While the ultraviolet weapons had been of little use in either of the real battles he'd fought with the _Peregrine _MS, their true strength was expressed when used against big, slow moving targets like capital ships.

And, of course, any kind of ground tank. He downed another two, stabbing them both through the gun slit before the others managed to back out of the zone of fire. Moving far too fast from them to keep up, the suit's engines flared out to help it catch another Bishop flat-footed with the daggers, maneuvering to keep the wings between it and the majority of the survivors.

He was halfway turned towards that group when a new idea struck him. There was one survivor left on 'his' side, that was, the side not guarded by the _Peregrine_'s wings. Using the empty hand that had once held the Vulcan cannon, he ripped the Bishop from the gravel it lay poised on, then flung it out as he turned.

_Success. _Four shells that would have hit him square on instead blasted the flying tank into a fireball. Before much longer, the entire simulated enemy force was in similar shape. Chameleon let out an enthusiastic warble, conceding defeat.

_It's getting hard_, Bryce noted soberly, _to not be too pleased with myself. Have to remember that I'm not training to deal with ground-pounders like these, but the deadliest Mobile Suit ever created. Unlike these ones, the Alpha has a beam weapon to clip my wings. Even if the simulators had data on it, no AI is the equal of the Alpha's pilot._

Easier to think about the battles outside a cockpit, where the obstacles did not seem so insurmountable. Chameleon, after some reprogramming, had done very well indeed. Besides managing to bring him biographical details on two of the pilots commissioned for using the Mobile Suits, it had brought him details on where to purchase closed circuit panels and wiring without attracting suspicion. While 'Professor Verne' had been under too much observation to do anything but scope out the scale and make of the colony, the tiny Haro had set up several of the steps to the final objective.

Which was not to say that his work had been entirely unfruitful either. Over time, he had come to get the real message that Exodus, out of necessity, was better provisioned than any other colony he'd been to. He'd seen hospitals, banks, and even a visible prison among this macrocosm of a city. _Have to remember that everyone here was exiled from Earth 20 years ago. Anyone younger than that has likely never laid eyes upon my home outside of recordings._ _Frightening, in a way._

"Okay. Enough daydreaming, back to work. Chameleon, pick me out a random vehicle design from the archives, and put a dozen of them in their most advantageous environment."

For once without any high-pitched squealing, it obliged, and suddenly he and _Peregrine_ were plopped down in the middle of a desert, its sand a strangely raw orange from the heat. He didn't have to wait long to see six unfamiliar flying machines clear the horizon, and six more pounce from behind a large dune.

Without flinching or thinking, he brought out the flank shoulder launchers and opened up on the first line. The missile trails were about halfway across the distance when they, along with all of the machines, simply stopped moving. A moment later, utter blackness.

Scowling, Bryce rose out of the simulator in annoyance, immediately picking the cause as someone stepping on the fibre-optics connecting the pod's electronics to the wall- he had, after all, experienced the trick many times before, usually Troy trying to get him to stop and eat instead of work.

In fact, the young man standing on the cable now actually looked a bit like him. Both were notably handsome athletic youths of similar age. What little separated them included hair color- dirty blond instead of Troy's healthy tan, and the expression and body language beneath his black-beige House of Shyron flight suit. This _person_ might have looked a bit like his best friend, but he imagined their personalities were as far apart as could be.

Almost remembering his vocal alteration too late, he frowned up the newcomer. "May I ask why the hell you just did that?"

The boy's expression didn't change from it's own displeasure. Instead he leaned forward onto the frame of the pod on one arm. "Just curious as to what you've been doing in there the past week or so."

"Running simulations", the leaner boy answered blandly, and Chameleon propped up on his shoulder as if confirming it. "Plans for the development of new Mobile Suits."

"Oh, really? And is there a reason why all of these new designs look like the _Peregrine_ Gundam?"

_Cripes. Should have known they'd have someone monitoring my sim data directly. Seen this guy before now, maybe he's the one they picked to follow me..._ _Now you're staring off into space. Think of something! _"No, for that… I was training to use the _Peregrine_ in combat."

Although Bryce had a feeling that the blond-haired boy already knew that truth, the way his narrow eyes darkened in their sockets actually made him shuffle out of the pod a bit. "That is supposed to be _my_ role, 'professor'."

Feeling trapped, he now swung up over the frame while thinking of a response. "Of course. My creations are to be piloted by the elite, top-scoring Valkyrie pilots in Shyron, are they not? Why should I not be among them, since I know them better than anyone else?"

By this time, the vocal argument had gathered a small crowd of interest around the space, mostly off-duty pilots including Fehn Bickham. Most of them had decent pilot's reflexes, but none of them could have reacted in time to stop the delicately poised arm that flew towards Chameleon in a razor-quick palm strike, knocking the rainbow Haro four meters to bang heavily against a wall.

_At this point_, Bryce noted hazily, alternately infuriated and shocked over the depths of that geyser of fury, that he had grown so attached to his little pet. _Were we in a schoolyard, our audience would be shouting 'Fight! Fight! Fight!' ad nauseum. _"That's coming out of your salary, child."

Equally angered now, or possibly moreso, Xain Cartwright-Temeritus advanced another step. "Don't you EVER call me child again, Professor, or I'll do that to your other two balls."

"Ah. My apologies… _infant_." _Actually, you're about the same age I am, but younger than who I'm supposed to be. Advantage._

As for the crowd, enthusiasm was finally breaking through military training- a few 'oooohs' from the boys before Xain fixed them with a violent stare as well. "The _Peregrine_ is MINE, old man. It was promised to ME."

"We'll see about that", he shot back, now eyeing Chameleon's motionless form to try and eyeball the damage inflicted. _I'll be lucky if it even works at all, after something like that. Heartless brute! _"Now I recognize you- the Admiral's nephew, Xain Cartwright-Temeritus. Maybe its time you learned that blood ties and violence are not a guarantee of success."

"And maybe it's time _you_ learned", Xain replied, practically spitting into his impassive face, "the difference between knowledge and pure _skill_." Surprising more people than just Bryce, he switched gears to a proud, mean smile, patting the metal of the simulator pod affectionately. "We'll settle this like gentlemen- as the Admiral would want. It's the only way you'll get to keep all of your blood inside of you."

With just a few hand motions, he then convinced a nearby rookie pilot to operate the main computer in the lounge, altering its view screen to display the familiar design of the _Peregrine_ Mobile Suit, shortly followed by a white-lined table of two columns and four rows. Bryce watched this occur detachedly, getting the first ominous hints of what was to come as the pilot steadily typed in both Xain Temeritus (his rival noted the omission of the Cartwright surname) and Professor Nirel Verne in the top row.

"Three rounds, professor", Xain announced aggressively, loud enough for everyone in the lounge to hear. "_Three _rounds, best two out of three. We'll both use the _Peregrine_ Mobile Suit in each contest. Winner gets to pilot the suit. Are you game?"

_Yeah. Really. God. Good thing I know how to be freaking STEALTHY and INCONSPICOUS. Like twenty people are watching this! _Yet… something else in the Daravon's heart would not let him back down now, no matter how much it risked his cover. Not with his Haro dead on the floor. Not with the stakes involved.

_Time to do something else really dumb. _He raised his hand and prepared to resist having it crushed by the stronger youth. "You have a deal, infant. I'll take anything you can dish out."

- - -

"Round One", Xain had explained confidently after lunch to an appreciative audience now pushing forty pilots and crewers, much to Bryce's dismay. "Targets. Both of us will go through the exact same simulation of the Battle of Cambodia from the Master wars. _Everything_ is fair game, with point values awarded for proportionately major kills. Higher score- alias, my score, wins."

"We will see", Bryce managed to respond sharply, still trying to maintain the pretense of being not only a legal adult, but an ego-ridden weapons scientist as he peered into the darkness of the vacant simulator pod. "I suppose the run ends when we're destroyed?"

"_No_, you get points for creative crashing and the size of your mangled corpse. _Of course_ your run ends when you die… dumbass. I'll be going first, you can watch me on the main screen, maybe get an idea of just whom you're dealing with here."

The outlook was _not_ good. Even worse, in fact, than Bryce had initially figured. Whatever words one could say about Shyron's top ace (Bryce could think of a few unsuitable for print), he knew his stuff, and he knew how to use a Mobile Suit.

Cambodia, as he had figured from the historical accounts of it, was a target-rich forest and lake environment riddled with entrenched LRAMs, tanks, choppers, bombers, troops, APCs, and what seemed to his eye like thousands of stray missiles flying everywhere and aimed at no one. Yet Temeritus' nephew took to it like a fish to water, strafing each nearby column with the handheld Vulcan and Buster Arm, racking up dozens of kills from the ground vehicles alone. The wings seemed to always be between him and fatal fire, soaking up enough shots to recharge _Peregrine_'s generator from scratch if the shots had been of the plasma variety.

Of particular note, one point where even Bryce accidentally whistled, was when Xain impaled a defensive bunker with a tree ripped from the woods, at the same time using the weight to spring up over the lip of the ridge, dodging two missiles and lining up a shot at the personal vehicle of distinguished Master Charaxes Aznable. Shortly after that, the attrition of anti-aircraft fire from the choppers finally took its toll and grounded the _Peregrine_, but the damage was done. Xain's final score clocked in at 19 total kills, plus 5 bonus points for nailing Master Aznable's personal armored carrier.

"Not my best", he commented wryly to onlookers as he stepped from the pod. "But let's see how the Professor does it, shall we?"

Trying his best not to look back at Xain's taunting, he now climbed into the adjacent simulator, closing the hatch before breathing out. _Okay. Remember the weaponry. Plasma Buster Arm, Beam Daggers, Vulcan Cannon, Launchers, and the wings. I notice he didn't use the Beam Daggers much- that's where I'll start._

He opened his eyes to find an unfamiliar land spread before him. No vehicles visible yet, but one could literally _feel_ the ridiculous amount of gunfire going on nearby, if not by sound.

Maybe go for Aznable's carrier first like Xain did, vaping everything nearby. That would be… where? 

None of the systems or screens held any answers- he was alone and directionless and bitterly swore to install Tri-Dimensional HUD radars on the Mobile Suits the next chance he got.

Finally, after several agonizing minutes of pacing through thick smatterings of trees, the enemy force erupted into being from a nearby hillside- two tanks and a small encampment protecting a huge turret that could not possibly be for him- it was far too large, angling up from the ground at a steep angle. The first tank fried before it even realized what was happening… but that movement had taken him right out into the clearing of the hillside, letting its partner get a shell off before meeting the same fate.

That brief strike, and the subsequent destruction of the local APC and turret, got the opposition moving; before long, countless whirling rotors could be heard from the lake to the east, letting fly with their explosive payloads before they even cleared the clouds of murky fog above it. Before Bryce could drop the beam daggers and bring out a long-range weapon, several shell impacts rocked him in his seat. He fired the shoulder launchers rapidly into the fog cloud, not sure if he'd hit anything or not, now plagued by the camouflaged choppers' loud barrages against the dubious protection of his wings.

_Damn it. This hill only exposes me, and the Aznable simulation will have heard the word by now. _Both the launchers clicked empty and, seeing no other choice, he leapt from the hill as if a madman fleeing a phage of mosquitoes, and took flight before hitting the dirty water below.

Now he was among them, equally muffled and concealed by the fog bank. He scored three of the flying machines with the Vulcan before their 'commander' got wise; he felt, rather than heard, at least _six_ separate missile locks from all around him. _Duh! Of course they wouldn't nestle together. By staying separate, they cover a larger area of the lake, and that makes it harder to concentrate fire against a single target in this cloud!_

Two of the missiles slammed harmlessly into the wings, while four others intersected on _Peregrine_'s chest before it's pilot could react. He felt something penetrate, caught a glimpse of scarlet fire erupting on the left shoulder, of dark water rushing up towards the main screen before everything went black as eternal oblivion once again.

- - -


	9. Trial

Phase 09: Trial 

- - -

_"Much to my regret, history shows us that the quickest and most efficient form of introduction between two consciousnesses, be they vast empires or two vagabonds, remains the act of skirmish, of spar, of duel. To test a man's character, you give him an crisis and the means to counter it." –Master Charaxes Aznable_

- - -

"Round Two: a race, pure and simple. We can bring the real things out for this one. Follow the course through the asteroid belt to the signal beacon at the far end of it. Fastest time wins. And I should remind you- it's too late to back out of your humiliation now."

Bryce only looked up from tending entirely imaginary wounds in order to scowl at the other youth's arrogance. "You first, I presume?"

A smirk on the other boy's lips. "Of course. Gives you a standard of comparison to shoot for."

"I'd rather shoot _you_." _Still, I may have a chance at this one. No shooting, only a matter of speed and maneuverability. _If not, his failure here would be complete… if so, there was still the third, unknown round to go.

"Watch your tongue", Xain shot back, eagerly climbing into the actual machine's cockpit, having already secured permission with launch control. "Not smart words, coming from a _defector_. Computer, Password is General Unilateral Neuro-Link Dispersive Autonomic Maneuver."

**Acknowledged.**

"You think they'll mind?" Bryce asked, quickly changing the subject. "Are we not supposed to keep my creations _hidden_, secret, out of sight of infiltrators?"

"Right then. If I see any Anno Domino infiltrators hanging out in _empty_ _space_, Professor, I'll let you know. Wouldn't want you to get scared of your old friends or anything."

With that, Xain passively motioned all those assembled to the doorway at the back of the bay corridor, so that the airlock exchange could commence. Reminded immediately of the supply convoy barges, Bryce watched the chest plate swing shut from behind the glass walls, knowing that the display they were about to see would likely be no less impressive.

_If so… It isn't a catastrophe, but I'd rather not leave the Peregrine in this jerk's hands. It's going to be hard enough to put up with Hyrcanian and Rana being placed outside of my control._ Reminded of the other suits, he glanced over at the honest curiosity on Fehn Bickham's face.

_Chameleon pulled up her bio before a certain thoughtless asshole smashed it… she doesn't seem a bad sort, at least. Hard to believe she makes her living blowing up law-abiding folk for Shyron._ That, of course, just made him more worried about just who would be chosen for the _Hyrcanian_ now.

Once the seals were double-checked, Xain kicked the spiky winged Mobile suit up and around on its engines to face the newly opened dock hatch. Even if he couldn't speak to his spectators with the private comm., the posture of the bipedal suit alone seemed to convey to its creator's eyes a degree of ego.

Like the ability to jack onto live comets, the Mobile Suits' ability to convey motions and gestures was purely incidental, thanks to the machines' initial concept as suits of modern-day armor instead of vehicles. No doubt it would take even an ace like Xain a while longer to fully master the pressure-sensor based controls, or learn how to control the individual digits of the hands, and make the suit flip someone the bird.

The moment he was out the hatchway, Fehn and Bryce were caught in an exuberant tide of the other mechanics and pilots rushing to the observation deck; the best place to spot the object in question. Instead of flat screens, a full 180-degree bank of pressure-sealed glass allowed them to catch the first leg of the asteroid belt.

Both looked about the deck for him, taking note of the natural obstacle for the near future; while extensive efforts by Shyron demolition teams had cleared chunks of asteroids away from the vulnerable docking bays like the one Xain had left by, the rest of the belt was as deadly a backdrop as it was a good hiding spot. Exodus itself had been built directly into the largest one, and there were some worthy contenders for that title visible right now. Chunks of iron, slate, and nickel the size of hotels drifted to and fro, grinding pieces of one another to fill the space between them with smaller, but no less deadly, bits.

He didn't really feel like just standing there and watching Xain again, as he had done before. Instead, he slowly sat down on a bench as close to Fehn as possible- thankfully, far away from the loudest spectators- and put on the façade once again. "Ah, miss Bickham. You seem tense. Have you known this… guy… for very long?"

Clearly shocked that someone would bother speaking to her right now, she stiffly shook her head and the ponytail along with it. "No, not long, Professor. We only got together when we were both commissioned for piloting the Mobile Suits."

'_Ze' Mobile Suits? _A familiar accent backed her words, and Bryce frowned. "Forgive me, but you are not originally from the House of Shyron, are you?"

Fehn paused a while, as if deciding how safe it would be to answer. "You are correct, m'sieur. I am originally from the House of Walther, and was transferred here in secret."

But the careful phrasing of that only made him more suspicious. "You mean to say… Walther is backing Shyron in secret? I had no idea."

"If you don't mind my impudence… That _is_ the general idea, Professor."

"_How_ long?" he no longer cared about stealth. This was _huge_. That one of the major nations of Earth- the one which had saved him from both death and subsequent despair- could be secretly funneling men and materiel to the other side…

She gave a long sigh. "I suppose there is no harm in it. I do not know if the illusion will last much longer anyway. Our leader, premier Jean Walther, decided several years back that the exiled House of Shyron is more capable of helping us to explore extragalactic space. The price for their help was our secret allegiance."

Unable to help himself, he made a face. "Espionage? You work against Anno Domino?" _Hey, pot to kettle: you are black! Still… this may have been how Shyron found out about our MS production in the first place!_

"No. Only private funding and the transfer of personnel. As our own premier said: 'We are not traitors, merely pragmatists'." She looked back out the big window, not at Xain or any of the asteroid, but at the stars beyond them, and chuckled sadly. "I never grew up expecting to become a military pilot, but an explorer. Xain and Mitstrugi might enjoy hurting and killing people… but I do not."

"No one can fault you for that, Miss Fehn."

Facing him, she spread both arms wide wryly, to indicate the younger pilots that were now almost-fanatically hanging on Xain's every move. If not friendship, then the man's seeming physical perfection, blood ties, and outlook had earned him a most dangerous kind of respect from his comrades.

"Okay, no one _should _fault you for that."

Still unwilling to smile, she did make a show of thinking hard. "Strange words, coming from the man who created these machines. What were they to be used for, if not warfare?"

_Definite ouchie. _She'd hit the softest spot of the weighty load of guilt he'd taken on ever since the Solar Barrier fight. Thinking back to exactly how he had explained it had a lot to do with a rather one-dimensional view of the folk of Shyron, along with faith that they were for defensive purposes only. The second lie, at least, had evaporated entirely: he still hadn't seen enough to entirely erase the second.

_Besides,_ he smiled grimly, watching Xain coming back in from his run through the asteroids,_ if they're all like that guy, bring on the nukes. _"I… I cannot claim ignorance as an excuse. Yet it is true that I lost myself in the grandeur of just how much they can do. You… would have to know all the physics-heavy programming to fully understand."

While it sounded like a dodge to both Fehn and Bryce's ears, the girl seemed satisfied for now, again reminding him that she was, by necessity and nature, not a big talker. Instead, she stood up and joined the others in applause. "Hey, good luck out there, by the way", she whispered to him with a trace of pity once the noise quotient had lowered again. "Guess us defectors have to stick together, hm?"

He acknowledged her bleakly, concentration already returning to the task at hand.

- - -

_Peregrine_ rose up out of the bay for the second time, a countdown program on the main screen encouraging Bryce to hurry and use extend the wings to maximum flight speed, something he wasn't sure if Xain had done properly on his run.

_Or else, _he noted with a pang of dread,_ perhaps he was simply being smart. He did bang the rear leg stabilizer, after all... and this configuration is meant for speed and nothing else. If I don't watch it, losing a silly race will be the least of my worries out here. _

Ten seconds before he could kick the machine forward and out of the hatchway entirely. As he had come to notice, the real thing felt notably different than the simulators at home or here. Besides his previous instance of the strange chanting in his own language stopping time for everything but him, the real machine's movements somehow felt more natural to his arms and legs, responding to their articulation with complete accuracy. For once just enjoying the sensation, he made a neutral gesture with the left arm to the bulb of glass he knew was the observation deck.

_3… 2… 1… NOW! Punch it! _Once all engines were at full power, Bryce looked ahead as he figured he should have done before now, making out the closest asteroids by shape and size. Already, several of the larger ones were coming into view, moving with a deceptive speed relative to their size. Plotting a course through all of this without slowing down to do so was likely just another aspect of Xain's 'test'.

Sliding around the opening leg, he saw the first real obstacle- a stationary rock with a hole one-third the size of the _Blood Grudge_ through it. Big as that was, the tunnel was obviously recently made, judging by the way that quick, tiny asteroids gradually spat from it. Detouring around the thing would cost him too much time, and so he plunged into the darkness with both arms out for protection, batting aside rocks no bigger than his own true body, feeling the impacts shake his hands within the Mobile Suit's arm troughs.

Despite this, he came out of the cave with a few dings he felt just as cleanly. The quickest path took him around several nearly spherical asteroids that seemed drawn to one another like magnets, only parting when their own impact shed gravel off of them. Quickly weaving through, he risked a momentary glance at the other timer next to his own- the record of 7 minutes and 31 seconds set by Xain. His trip through the cave and the field itself had already eaten up 4 minutes of that time, and the targeting sensors spared no compassion in letting him know that he'd only covered half the distance.

_I've been going about this all wrong, trying to match this guy's piloting skills_, he decided while dodging another sphere. _He really **is **the better pilot… but no scientist- I designed these Mobile Suits. I know them better than anyone else… have to take advantage of that!_

So instead of serving around the next big rock ahead of him, a move that would have taken him at least 20 seconds, he brought forth the Plasma Buster Arm. Naturally, the captured Mobile Suit had been stripped of most of its weapons for security reasons. The beam daggers and Vulcan gun removed, the missile launcher magazines emptied… but the buster arm was a part of the suit, mounted just above the right hand wrist, and one could not remove it without removing the entire right arm itself.

One shot, two shots, three… The resulting blasts were still minimal, muffled as they were by a power-governor he himself had helped the mechanics to install. But the asteroid in question was not an armored and neutron-shielded military level spacecraft either; while its nickel-iron core held firm, the rock portion blew apart on the fourth shot with great fanfare, clearing the way.

_Going to be tricky… _Ignoring the thousands of tiny bits that now surrounded him, Bryce pulled out another new trick; something he knew Xain would never have guessed at. The buster arm fired again at the nickel portion of a nearby rock, one of the few large ones that had survived the explosion of laser energy. It's pilot saw the shot reflect with equal vigor, and a tight smile at the conceit of this ploy. _There's a reason Peregrine has only one modern laser weapon in its arsenal. Now, it's harvest time!_

The first few reflected shots, in fact, did miss him. However, either through luck or will, Bryce managed to manually angle the suit's wings to catch subsequent blasts upon their backsides, at last serving their most innovative purpose, beyond that of simple protection. Laced with cortosis and a peculiar variant on solar-absorbing panels, the wings took in the green energy released from the buster… and then funneled it into the machine's main reactor just as the garish red 'power critical' warning flashed across the screen in front of the pilot.

He ignored it. _Xain had to throttle back at this point, unable to recharge the reactor. But with this supply, I can keep going full speed the rest of the way. Speaking of…_

7 Minutes and 8 seconds had passed since GO, and now the beacon was within sight. Taking no chances, he eagerly kick-flipped off one slow-moving tumbler- another new move- then stretched out the left arm with his own to touch the glowing round cylinder. All of this took a mere 10 seconds, and he saw the extended metal hand touch it before the counter reached 7:25.

Grasping the small device tight like Chameleon, he closed his eyes infinitesimally tight for a moment. Out here, without private comm. units, no one would hear him. All the same, he clapped one hand over his mouth, the better to contain the celebration that threatened to escape.

_One all now, Xain. Bring it on…_

- - -

As it turned out, the last round's objective was remarkable only in its lack of surprise. Back amongst the simulator pods, Temeritus' nephew had quickly explained how two of the computers could be set up to do joint training exercises. It was meant to promote cooperation among squadmates using the same type of craft. This time, however, the two linked pilots in question would meet as dueling enemies… and they would both be in a fully functional _Peregrine_ Mobile Suit.

"As you can see, oldster, I've saved the best for last", Xain finished up, having not mentioned one bit about Bryce's victory. "The setup is a record of the ruined metropolis of Latvika, last one standing wins."

"Interesting", the other boy observed carefully, trying fruitlessly to remember something about how Latvika had become a desolate ghost town. _Wasn't quite close enough to Chernobyl to be affected… maybe just economy?_ "Natural of you to move the action back to the simulators, now that you've seen our differences. Remember, however, that the winner pilots the real thing."

Xain scoffed. "Don't talk. I say this round is the most relevant, since we obviously won't be racing in the middle of combat. No… that was just to test speed and maneuverability."

"And inventiveness, of course."

"And that", he admitted, though it sounded forced. "The first two kept our performances separate. But this time, you're going to have to deal with me directly. You'll learn the differences there soon enough. To the death… ya redhead geek."

"Same, blondie-boy."

Needing to say nothing more, both hunched down into the very pods Bryce had been training in when this gauntlet had first been thrown down. At once, the crowd outside became invisible to the naked eye, instead displaying the familiar main screen of the _Peregrine_, surveying a scorched montage of buildings against an eerily realistic soot-black sky. _Latvika. _Gripping both the hand controls tight, he knew that Xain was likely experiencing the exact same thing in a different quadrant of the wrecked city's many districts and buildings.

_Buildings? Not buildings, cover. Learned that much from Cambodia, at least. Best not to go flying around showily, that'll just blow any chance at a surprise attack. _Once again, he devoutly wished for a HUD radar system, even if its presence would negate the possibility of an ambush. _Best to stick with the daggers and buster for now. That last one's really coming in handy, and as long as he doesn't know about the wings… All right. Time to get moving._

Bryce was stomping down a side street near what looked like an abandoned mall when _Peregrine_'s double burst out upon him with more than one surprise. First, this version bore a martial shade of bright red on its metal skin in all the places where the original bore blue. More importantly, though, was the way the machine's empty left fist came up in an uppercut, knocking the blue Mobile Suit into a radio tower before spraying it with the handheld Vulcan gun.

Quickly regaining his balance, Bryce took flight partly out of reflex to avoid taking anything worse than a half-dozen bullet hits, then returned fire with the buster. But by the time the shot scorched the pavement, the red Mobile Suit had found cover behind an abandoned truck, firing a spread of missiles over top of it. Bryce winced. _Simulated Earth-gravity. Can't use the wings to guard and the engines to fly unless I want to drain my power reserves. Maybe he was paying more attention than I thought!_

Reacting out of instinct, he dropped the blue machine beneath the artillery by simply cutting power to the wings, then charged on foot with both daggers drawn. Seeing the danger immediately, _Peregrine_'s red-colored replica kicked the truck at him and followed that with another pair of missiles before taking flight to escape Bryce's lunge.

In the simulated pilot's seat, he allowed himself a small grin. _Just like before, Xain didn't make these machines, doesn't know all their secrets. _Acting quickly, he slammed both dagger pommels together, the plugs at either end instantly triggering receivers, causing the flow of plasma energy to be redirected… into what was, for this situation, a more effective weapon- a single beam _katana_, it's deceptively gentle violet tone jutting up to twice the length of the combined handle and thrice that of the normal dagger.

The new weapon shredded the truck and was carefully inserted into the missiles to create a smoke shroud not unlike the one that had defeated him in the first simulation. As he had hoped, a greatly surprised Xain limited himself to only lobbing two more missiles into the cloud, knowing that any hit now would be because of luck, not aim.

_Which leaves him with two out of ten. Wanted to try and tag me with Peregrine's strongest ranged weapon… not gonna happen. _Reminded of his own full magazine, Bryce discharged two missiles of his own out as a diversion, then shot out of the cloud at top speed, aimed for the black sky above.

Sure enough, Xain had been pacing him, circling the cloud at a distance trying to see where he would pop out. But he was much closer than expected, close enough to bring his beam daggers to bear as well. Thrusting forward with all his might, he partly bowled over the other mobile suit, at last clashing directly with the beam katana, so that both sprawled into a tumble, dragged along by their jump-jets, onto a sloped panel of cement tiles.

The inner danger sense Bryce had noticed developing in him was now screaming for him to take flight, to fire the afterburners, put some distance between them as both suits grinded down the slope on legs alone. But with both beam sabers interlocked into a death-duel, consuming so much discretionary power, that simply wasn't possible. Xain, for the most part, had used his daggers to keep the katana at bay instead of thrusting for the chest cockpit. Before long, Bryce spotted something else rush up at them from the blackened concourse- a large stone and plastic median that divided the concourse of the park below. It was directly in their way.

Now Xain didn't seem so hot for close-combat. Probably screaming 'Shit!' around the same time his rival had. Both also extended their wings simultaneously, momentarily losing sight of each other in the chaos until two more of Bryce's missiles blasted an apartment building to bits.

No time for anything but dodging the next volley from nowhere, force the blue one to come up after him. They had both lost sight of the ground now, flying around, circling each other like angry hawks amidst eight or ten of the tallest city towers still standing. Aiming the plasma buster while doing this was manifestly difficult, but Bryce no longer wished to waste any more of his ammo advantage- they had only hit once anyway.

Xain, of course, returned the favor, prompting Bryce to flip over and expose both wings to the neon green shot, the way he had done on the asteroid course. What he hadn't counted on was his target being aware of this as well, and disgorging both of his last missiles into the wing assembly before he could pull back.

He was falling before the violent rattling made him bite down on his own tongue. Both wings fried, adjusting themselves at a fifth their normal speed if at all. Worse, Xain was following him down all the way, spraying his target liberally with the Vulcan gun. Again and again he would hear a bullet zing right off the armored plating, but wouldn't kid himself- the kinetic energy the projectiles expended upon contact served to weaken the overall integrity of the machine, which now read at a dangerous 64 percent. 62 percent…

"Crud! Computer, detach both wings, now!" That made the suit considerably more nimble on the ground and gave his pursuer one more obstacle to dodge (he had a briefly satisfying moment of seeing Xain's Gundam plough directly into the trashed flaps of metal), but it didn't solve his immediate problem of gravity. Instead, he held the suit on course by feel, directly towards the closest tower, and shot out the beam katana directly into the seamless bank of glass windows. While the ultraviolet weapon still wouldn't act as a true katana would in that regard, Bryce could feel his descent slowing before the ground came into view, allowing for a landing with minimal damage.

His opponent had not missed a trick- he riddled Bryce's landing zone with bullets from up in midair the moment the older boy had touched the pavement. Another wasted pair of missiles were his only reply as he hid behind a statue, watching the skies carefully.

A few terrifying minutes of hide-and-seek after that, he spotted his chance; Xain flying overhead, momentarily blinded by the smoke shroud. Bryce's metallic-blue _Peregrine_ had had its wings clipped, but still held both the flared aft thruster engines and powerful legs that allowed it to get a running start when flying in Earth-type gravity. So he jumped, first kicking off the statue then a ruined skyscraper, throwing one of the separated beam daggers with all his might, a lethal projectile ascending towards the doppelganger even faster than Bryce was.

Curving around to block, Xain managed to get the buster arm out just in time to block and destroy the bait… and his attacker smiled grimly, emerging from the smoke shroud in midair and plunging his second dagger into the proverbial 'heart' of the other machine. He could only imagine what it looked like to the one inside- a beam of purple energy nearly his own size going through the main view screen and out the back, burning through his body but not inflicting any real damage.

If this had been real life, Xain Cartwright-Temeritus would have been incinerated before he could scream. In this moment, however, Bryce found he was glad such was not the case. _This guy may be an arrogant jerk… but his life is one of those I have been trying to save from the stolen MS units. I've never purposely killed or hurt anyone just because they annoyed me. Don't intend to start now._

That was the end of it- before the red MS' gutted remains could start arcing towards the ground, darkness engulfed everything once again. Bryce thought he heard a scream coming from outside the pod, but could not tell who…

Opening the hatch, he gaped. Admiral Temeritus was looking down at his pod much as one would a bug, with his arms neatly folded across his beige tunic. While nothing in the way of anger was on his face, he could tell just by the way everyone else was keeping their distance that he'd seen what they were up to.

His mind was so stunned by this, in fact, that he had momentarily forgotten about Xain, who was now exposed by his own pod hatch; and equally thrown by the look of it. He had already forgotten about whatever torrent of Jujitsu rage he might have directed at the winner of their little game.

"Interesting exercise", the admiral spoke up darkly, breaking the silence. "Was this… your suggestion, Professor?"

His first impulse was to shake his head, for the usual reasons and some other ones too. But off the blank screen's reflection, he saw Xain's own expression, and knew that the other boy was fully prepared to cast the blame onto him no matter what. "Merely a test of your nephew's skills, Admiral", he replied, remembering to fake his best 'grown-up' voice at the last second. "Machines of this power require skilled pilots."

Temeritus remained grave and slow in his speech. "True. However, I would never have expected you to be so bold. Perhaps Intelligence never told you that your machines are being held on the order of the High Council. And… none of our pilots warned you that this training program was a secret?"

"None, sir."

Looking somewhat satisfied with this, he shot a look at Xain, and- to the surprise of everyone involved- enthusiastically helped Bryce out of the pod by hand. "I should be grateful for your enthusiasm and creativity in putting this together, Professor."

"W-w-what?"

The older man shrugged as if he'd said nothing of import. "All of the sims we have run thus far in this program have were meant for more old-fashioned military vehicles, or at the best, Valkyries. _You_, however, know how to get my ace pilots used to using your brilliant Mobile Suits. For that, I thank you. Just… leave the live-fire exercises out of it next time, alright?"

Feeling like a zombie, he just nodded his head blankly. "Uh. Uh-huh."

Now actually smiling, Temeritus looked around at the other pilots in the lounge. "I am certain Xain, Fehn, and, once he arrives, Mitstrugi, will all appreciate this gesture to my pilots. Carry on, but keep quiet about it. That's all."

Once the door had closed behind him, Bryce dared to arc his neck back around to spot the volatile mix of awe, disbelief, and finally outrage on Xain's normally handsome face. Temeritus could say what he wanted: Bryce could tell from the eyes alone that he had not yet come close to earning the other boy's admiration, nor his respect. Only Fehn did that, and for now, that was enough.

- - -

With all color momentarily absent from his face, Jakob Daravon seemed to be intent on tapping out the entire score of the national anthem with the flatscreen Umil Granq had given him. The short, wavy-haired boy stood straight up across the desk, once again looking like a skittish deer caught in headlights.

_I don't understand what it is about leaders,_ Umil mused in barely suppressed terror, _that they seem to want to drag out uncomfortable moments like this one as long as possible. The wait is punishment enough._

"You're a lucky boy, Granq", Jakob said at last, sighing as he emerged from his chair. "Not many people know enough about this project to understand what you've done here. If I hadn't caught this, we would have put them into production now… and had to refund Anno Domino their money one battle after that."

"S-s-sir", he stammered, for once wishing he had his old friends with him to take part of the animosity his boss was broadcasting. "Our team has done our v-very best g-given the haste with which they were assembled."

But Jakob shook his head in feign amusement. "I'm not talking about that, you silly boy. I'm talking about the scores achieved in testing of the new MS units. If you were going to hack into our system and alter the scores, Granq… at least… don't make them the exact equal of the _Rana_'s. I _know_ they aren't that good."

He immediately wanted to focus on anything else besides the face before him now, finding plenty to look at in the night skyline of Hong Kong.

"I _should _fire you for this, for lying to me", Jakob murmured delicately. "But in this case, I have little choice- you are now Daravon's top expert in Mobile Suit production, now that your friends seem content to build things far below their skill level."

Umil managed a tight grimace, both of the pleasure of finally receiving his own command, and the bitter acknowledgement of how it had come to pass. _Troy and Elya are off building **cars** for some nowhere company. Revealing the reason why now… would get me fired for keeping the truth from him. Again._

"The _actual_ scores, Umil", Jakob spoke up. "I want them on my desk tomorrow morning, I'm tired of these setbacks. The faster we make these new Mobile Suits, the faster the Shyron scum dies."

Not sure what to make of sudden eagerness in his boss' face, he simply nodded. "U-understood, sir. My people have gone home already, but I'll run the machines myself. I don't want any trouble."

"Can't you just tell me what they are?!"

The boy sagged, and stared hard up at the ceiling tiles. "No particular numbers come to mind, but… I know the best ones were for speed and maneuverability, roughly 60 of the _Rana_."

"That's good. Their primary purpose is to be as fast and powerful as Shyron Valkyries, and that's close. Continue the research. Give everything you are able; I will instruct your subordinates as such. You may have access to whatever funding you require."

Hiding his surprise at such an adamant order, Umil gave a low bow. _So unlike his usual. Perhaps this is more important than I thought_ "Of course, sir. One more thing before I go… is there any news?"

The premier gave him a wan stare came across as sad against the night behind him, aware of both what he referred to and why. "Nothing yet. But whether it's one family member I've lost to those traitorous bastards or two, our situation remains the same. Anno Domino wants those weapons. _I_ want those weapons. Get on it."

---


	10. Legacy

**Phase 10: Legacy**

- - -

Sheng Mitstrugi did not _look_ like an elite military pilot, at least from Bryce's first glance. Once he had first entered the storage bay where his new Mobile Suit was being kept, he pulled his pilot's helmet off to reveal a hairstyle that screamed 'rockstar', bearing as it did five different shades of neon color contained in different long, loose spikes of hair. While nowhere near as muscular as Xain or Troy, by folding his arms, he still managed to emit a sense of more-than-slight irritation at the change he'd just now been informed of.

"Mitstrugi is a bit famous among all colonies outside of Sol, see", Fehn was explaining to him across the bay, out of their new pilot's earshot. "Like most guys his age in Shyron, he eventually got snared by the Admiral's increasing requests for drafting the populace of the Colonies."

Leaning absently on one knee, Bryce looked closer at the man's dark-skinned face, showing enough wear to be at least as old as Professor Nirel Verne was supposed to be. "And before that?"

Fehn smiled back narrowly. "I'm surprised you don't know, m'sieu Verne. Whenever he's not on duty, he's a singer for a band called OZ. Surely, you've seen the posters?"

Now that he thought of it some more, Bryce knew he had seen advertisements for something with such a name aboard Exodus, even if the posters weren't terribly clear on what exactly OZ was. "He must have some friends in high places, to be able to keep up a galactic tour schedule as well as popping back in here whenever he- hey!"

His complaint was directed towards Mitstrugi, who was now physically testing the plating of the _Hyrcanian_ Gundam piece by piece, at the moment looking rather like a curious five-year old as he haphazardly knocked on the welds with his ear pressed to them. "That's delicate machinery you're messing with!"

For the first time, they locked eyes, and Mitstrugi smiled gently through the two spikes of pink and blue framing his face. "Not so delicate, I think, no?"

_It's a pity I'm playing the role of an obsessive-compulsive, _Bryce noted, trying to cover his amusement at the other man's tone and speech. _From the looks of things, I might get along with this guy famously if he was an Earthling. _"Yes, but that doesn't mean you should go poking around in every crevice. It could be dangerous."

"So you included pituitary glands, no? Excellently realistic creations, Prof, I really must commend you…"

"Accepted", Bryce replied, actually wanting to cut his observations off as fast as he could. _Lest we forget, this guy is still a pilot like Xain or Fehn. His job is to take these things out into space and kill my people with them. _"You'll find _Hyrcanian _is at its strongest on a planetary surface instead of space- it is there that it can shift to its secondary mode."

"Aye", Mitstrugi said, eyeing the dead black treads on the back thoughtfully. "Not like the others, no, weaker in space battles. Do I sense old Heimy's hand in this reassignment?"

"Not at all", Fehn corrected him smoothly, sounding a bit professionally offended by the taller boy's casual use of the Admiral's first name. "This one was supposed to be for Xain until Professor Verne here gave us the _Peregrine_. If it weren't for him, you'd have no Mobile Suit at all, Sheng. Count your blessings."

Hearing the dull but insistent tone of the mission alarm blare out over the colony's deepest hangars, the only reaction on Sheng's face was a nearly comical raising of his eyebrows. "One, two… ah. Perhaps I shall finish counting some other time then. I've training to do, and you've got a briefing to go to. Razz blondie for me, will you?"

"They don't really like each other", she explained unnecessarily once he was gone, then rushed for the main hallway, already grabbing her slate gray pilot's helmet off the floor and letting her ponytail down the curve of her back. Still watching the new pilot recede, Bryce snorted lightly, for once bonded with Mitstrugi if only in their mutual dislike of their supposed superior. "Pah. Does Xain like anyone at all? Or vice versa?"

Of course, she was too far away by now to hear that. But at the very least, he could check what was going on, even if they wouldn't allow him to view the pilot's briefing. Chameleon was still busted, of course- the on-base mechanics he'd worked with had apologetically offered him a new one, given that repairing the little bugger would cost more out of his salary than simply buying another.

He had refused, almost insulted by the crudeness of the trap. This was the exiled Birthright House of _Shyron_, capital of political intrigue and backstabbing. Any custom Haro they gave away would no doubt be equipped with hidden parameters to spy on him. The bugs, and then Xain Temeritus' earlier challenge, had made it perfectly clear that while his expertise was appreciated, he wasn't trusted.

… _And with good reason_. Even without Chameleon, his other talents would at least be able to check the contents of what the mission summarized. Idly strolling over to a public terminal and making sure no one could see what was on the screen itself, he cautiously made the necessary adjustments in order to view the data stream available to any pilot who hadn't listened to the details of the briefing either Xain or one of the captains was giving right now.

_Blah blah blah, foreign incident, blah blah, crisis reports, aggression by unknown enemy force, intelligence reports indicate… Ohhhh CRAP!!_

Before anyone could take note of the expression that had suddenly flushed his face, he had scrambled out of the area, desperate for a way to regain some sense of situation that had suddenly spun out of control.

- - -

Even among the machines Captain Mokra Parker imagined shared its design type, their quarry stood out. It still looked far larger than the three machines he had now had the chance to take a better look at, and held no visible texture that looked anything like metal. Rather, its coloring and trailing fins sprouting out the back as it arrived at the colony, made it look all the more like a ghost.

Bending down and settling into _Blood Grudge_'s center seat, he allowed himself a hiss of satisfaction that had nothing to do with being granted the privilege of helming his mentor's mighty red flagship. Intelligence had been correct after all- the white Mobile Suit, not satisfied with destroying merely one of Shyron's remote border colonies, had gone for a second one nearby not long after. Like before, it had arrived gripping a blue-tailed comet closely for a ride, a bipedal white machine aping the motions of its pilot. An army unto itself for the purpose at hand.

_This time, however_… This time, he would not be merely dealing with a pack of bored, dull-witted border patrollers. This time, they had _Blood Grudge_. They had its entire compliment of Valkyries added to the Henders colonies own guardian force… plus _Rana_ and _Peregrine_. _No single machine can stand up to such an ambush_, Parker told himself fervently, realizing now that after three such engagements, he'd developed an almost supernatural dread of the enemy in question. _Third time's the charm. Today, the maniac's laughter is silenced forever._

"Contact reported. MS pilots, you're up first. Get his attention away from the colony and herd him towards the ship. We'll send two squads to support you."

"Roger that", Xain Temeritus' voice came back to him, and the two Mobile Suits surged forth in response towards their target, extensions of their pilot's bodies. While Parker imagined the first enemy response would his usual deranged amusement, he also didn't waste any time in firing on his challengers. First, the buster at the center of the feather cluster emitted a beam into _Rana_'s huge tower shield, and the white MS hauled out its beam whip to shred incoming missiles from _Peregrine_.

"Insolent little murderer, is he", Parker whispered darkly. Then, far louder, an order: "Herding this one won't work. Keep all Valkyries on the edge of the battle zone, to fire missiles from a distance of 15 kilometers _minimum_. Relay the same orders to Henderson Colony Defense."

Parker bridled. If he strained his round ears hard enough, he could probably hear the chorus of groans from the fighter aces aboard his ship, who had now been relegated to secondary attack positions, even if it was for their own safety. Keeping them out of the center kept things nice and simple for the MS pilots though- two Mobile Suits against one, nothing else in consideration. _Throwing more ships in just means more targets, makes the fight more chaotic._

Even as the more nimble craft backed away, he got impression he'd made the right decision along with a rare moment of true, unabashed _awe_. These three machines, these three mechanized dervishes that he'd left to fight amongst themselves, one enemy and two allies, were starting to remind him of his first fight against them. Agility, natural movements, and power- such power- all compressed into an ultra flexible frame that was really no more than four times a human's size. If they had not been trying to kill each other, Mokra Parker would with all certainty have called it living art, or perhaps a sublime ceremonial dance. The dance of death.

_Peregrine_ and _Rana_'s other weapons now bore forth. While Xain's Mobile Suit took aim with a long laser rifle, the more melee-oriented _Rana_ Gundam lunged for its target with the glowing tip of its beam glaive, nearly taking the white Mobile Suit's leg off before it flinched out of the way and angled several of the feather-shaped seeker back missiles towards Fehn Bickham and _Rana_'s face.

A brief blue flash lit up the battlezone… and Parker exhaled, seeing the white feathers fly by harmlessly before detonating. He'd remembered almost too late that the Waltherian girl's suit held a powerful EMP generator in the round amethyst crystal that adorned its crown-like 'head' area. Whatever guidance system the missiles held had suddenly turned into nothing but dead weight. While Fehn's quick thinking was rewarded with a spray of needle bullets from the _Alpha_'s own head weapons, that was a pinprick compared to what the seeker missiles could have done to her.

Once the smoke clouds had cleared, he saw that his mentor's ace nephew had wasted no time in taking advantage of the cover- the bases of _Peregrine_'s violet beam daggers were now slammed together, a katana interlocked with the other Mobile Suit's beam whip, necessitating constant maneuvering on Xain's part to avoid being hit by the unparried section of edge, which had already cut one of the left elbow joints down by a handful of meters.

Eyes narrowed, Parker hammered his chair, mostly to get attention. "All right. He seems a bit shaken. On ten, we pin him in place and ventilate the whole area with the big guns. Nothing can survive. Launch signal flares on five."

The deck suddenly bucked beneath his boots, and he actually laughed aloud, alarming Temeritus' handpicked crew. _Just like before, trying to control our ship's course with the illegal Slave Drive. Now, however, we know how to counter that_. "The idiot. Suspend all this ship's data feeds for three seconds then resume normal operations."

He gave no small thought of thanks to Heim Temeritus, who had made sure to dig up and share the solution to such old-fashioned technology the very day they had returned from their battles near Earth. Slave Drive, or more properly, Synchronization broadcasting units, were never meant for use in combat- they only substituted false command data into a ship's proverbial 'nervous system'. While this one was certainly stronger than any the captain had heard of, it's control could be easily defeated by a competent ship commander who paid any attention to his surroundings.

He looked up, and balked- the white Mobile Suit hadn't been slowed down at all while making that broadcast- it had retreated from the combat zone! In the time it took for him to order an overeager Xain not to follow it out of their range, the suit had flown back to it's point of entry and fired up it's own remote engines.

_Impossible! How did he know we were about to fire? _"Cease firing operations", he barked. "Won't do any good now. He's gone. Reassemble around the Henderson Colony in case he tries attacking it."

It wouldn't, though. He knew that much out of instinct. What it couldn't tell him was what hint had caused the normally battle-crazed suit and its pilot to back off from their certain demise. _Maybe… maybe that Slave Drive does more than we thought? Capture data as well as substitute? Or a traitor on the ship? No…Any theories now are meaningless. We damaged him, and saved the colony. A partial victory for Shyron._

_And, a partial defeat..._

- - -

"There's something not _right_ about this place."

Unfamiliar as she was with all things related to warfare, Bianca Tanner knew some of what to expect after their dropship touched down on unstable jungle dirt. She was not at all surprised to see this stretch of ferns lining the clearings, the sun illuminating them and the trees with an orange tinge that suggested they were in a giant frying pan.

The unloading of their own mobile artillery, not so much different from the destroyed vehicles here, gave her some free time to notice the unusual amount of debris around. Most of it was difficult to place to any vehicle type, buried in the ground or hidden beneath the flora.

She also noticed the soldier near her was _shaking_. Not the electrodes- he was doing exactly as he was ordered, patrolling the area for hostiles just as she was. While there was no way of telling his hair color, shaved bald as she was, his main distinguishing features were his overly large, expressive eye sockets and light green irises, contrasting with his small hook nose, that created the constant impression of surprise no matter how he truly felt.

"You can't _possibly_ be cold", she grated out, sounding tougher than she had wanted to- weeks of hard living on the lunar base had seemingly thickened her windpipe. "What's up… Hirotu?"

The guy touched his nametag briefly, then stopped shaking when she drew closer. "I remember this place. Cambodian jungle. Lurkveil versus Aznable… a disaster for my people."

She then spotted a familiar insignia- a black curl of flame silhouetted against a circle of sky blue, and could only nod in empathy. "A battlefield. You'll have to excuse me for not recognizing it right away- my people don't place much emphasis on historical battles."

"You're forgiven", trooper Hirotu whispered brokenly, helping her over a muddy ridge by his other glove. "I could guess your nationality from how you've been holding out with Gisbourne so far."

Now it was her turn to touch her nametag gingerly, to find nothing there but dead black armor since their superiors still couldn't force a name out of her no matter what they did. It was usually a triumph, but now… "Don't remind me of what we're into here. Please. These uniforms are headache enough."

"Done. It'll be nice to have some female company. I mean that in a positive way, of course."

By now, they had marched to the imposed distance limit. Finding nothing, Hirotu elected a different route past the largest grove of trees interspersed with destroyed machinery. Bianca followed. "That's comforting, for a change. So what did you do?"

At once, Hirotu stared hard at a cracked helicopter rotor. "I… killed a man."

"…And?"

"And, what?" Now she wished he had just kept looking at the rotor instead of looking at her with palpable energy and anger distorting his youthful features. "Did you expect me to explain _why_?"

"There's always a reason", she argued, still finding it difficult to believe she was looking at a real murderer. _Stupid to believe they all look like Gisbourne and Yamato, huh?_

A sigh. "I suppose you are right about that. To put it simply, because he had some illegal 'fun' with my little sister, Chanika. Turned out he had a few good friends amongst the powers that be. I took the rap, he did not. End of story, now, do you want me to dissect your life too?"

"Easy." That seemed to temper Hirotu's wrath a bit- even with his eyes blazing, the constant threat their superiors held over them limited what he could do. "I never meant to pry-"

"Then don't… I mean, I'm sorry about that. Thinking about that… still pisses me off. A lot. It's not you."

_First name won't hurt anyone, and I doubt he'll tell. _"You can call me Bianca, Hirotu. It's nice to find someone else who doesn't deserve to be stuck here. I hate to admit it… but some of the men here deserve it a hundred times over. They talk like they're _proud_ of what they've done."

Hirotu nodded. "I've been here for three years now. You get used to seeing the worst humanity has to offer brought in here after a while. _One _positive thing Anno Domino does, catching and bringing dogs like Wilhelm Gottenfried to heel."

_Gottenfried! _Even _she_ knew that name from the global broadcasts back home. In particular, the Top 10 Most Wanted. It actually made Bianca look around in alarm for a moment, ridiculously expecting the famous killer to leap out from behind a tropical bush. "He's not _here_, is he?"

Hirotu chuckled. "Silly girl. _We're _here because we have little stomach for soldiering yet. In fact, I'm normally a pilot. Gottenfried and his ilk are on the mission because they enjoy it, and we're the security for the ship that brought us all here." Slowly traversing his gaze from their dropship to an obstructed point far to the east, he shuddered at imagined gunfire. "I'd hate to be in that town right now, regardless."

Then they were back in the clearing, again able to see the disabled turret that she had first spotted. Two nearby soldiers had had the same idea, pairing up and patrolling the opposite cluster of trees for threats. Entertaining the notion of waving at them like they were friends or something, she nearly tripped on another bit of scrap, and remembered what had paired her up with Hirotu. "Don't see the officer or his litte Haro of death. So, if you don't mind, refresh my memory. Aznable versus Lurkveil in this jungle, obviously some thirty years ago. The Master Wars."

Eyes blank as the clouds above them, Hirotu nodded, crouched down near the ship. "Typical of the squabbles that led to the end of the Masters and the birth of _this _army to resist them. My people thought superior numbers could compensate for fighting Charaxes Aznable in his front yard, that they could take over everything due south of our home region in China. They were wrong."

"Yeah, I kind of got that impression. Masters only their own minds, I should think."

Hirotu shrugged. "It happened before either of us were born; we cannot judge too harshly. And their powers were real enough, or so my father told me. For the first time, we had humans with _real_ psychic powers among other abilities… how could we not treat them as though they were special? As Gods?"

"Special is one thing, letting them form their own nations is quite another."

Hirotu stood, hearing the high-pitched recall alarm mingle with the sound of hundreds of pairs of feet returning. "The governments of the 21st century had failed our people, miss Bianca. As I said, we cannot judge the past too harshly, not unless we know more about the world." She thought that would be the end of it until he tapped her armor on its spaulders. "Besides. Without Master Qualla Peacecraft's drive for peace in her realm, the iron will you've got in you might never have taken root. I must say that impresses me. Most break within a week or two, but you've held on for months now, resisting them when you can…"

Not daring to chat further- least of all on that subject, both scrambled to join the others. While several had blood and debris splattered upon their armor, she didn't immediately notice anyone missing from the initial drop. She didn't see Wilhelm Gottenfried's distinctive butterfly of facial scars either, but just knowing he was among this crowd made her antsy.

She did, however, see their burly commanding officer. "Settle down, you worms", he was commanding some of the rowdier grunts. "We ain't done yet. Recall was issued to start the buildup back at HQ. Y'all know what that means."

She couldn't see Hirotu, had lost track of him amongst the bigger men. Maybe he knew what the 'buildup' meant, but she didn't have a clue. Only that it could not be anything good. Not here. Not in this place.

Still, like the opposite of Gottenfried, knowing that Hirotu was there made the trip back to the mother ship and then to space a little easier to bear.

- - -

_Where is she? _

Bryce Daravon studied a gargantuan shuttle in the Exodus Museum of Galactic History and bit his lip in worry. It hadn't taken long for him to exhaust whatever options he might have had to intervene in the recent battle over the Henderson colony without blowing his cover, specifically because those options didn't exist.

He had cursed himself and everything around him upon first realizing this. Screamed, moped around his apartment, feared beyond his own death that he had just seen the last he ever would of the singer and the girl pilot, or their designated rides.

For the GX-23 _Rana_ at least, that was not true. Yet that was only the tip of the iceberg- there were a million things that could account for the death or wounding of the pilot while keeping the vehicle intact. Coming to grips with exactly why he was so worried that Fehn Bickham wouldn't be here at the museum told the tale of his encroaching loneliness better than any words could say. That unfamiliar feeling was a disease, and it was getting worse.

Then he saw Fehn, sidestepping around an exhibit railing. To his surprise, several of the large strands of dark brown hair normally covering the left area of her face were gone, replaced with semitransparent bandages that encased half of the left side above the eye. Even more surprising- she was _smiling_ at him in spite of the searing pain that side of her face must have been feeling.

"What… Fehn… what happened to you?"

Sidling up to him, she looked at the shuttle exhibit herself. "Fortunes of war, m'sieu Verne. Our target proved hotter than we expected. A laser blast your _Rana _couldn't quite stop."

He looked back wanly. "The _Alpha _Gundam. You were lucky to just get your face and hair burned."

She frowned, and not at the mention of her temporary disfigurement. "How did you know that?"

This time, he managed not to betray any sign of uncertainty, instead lying smoothly "…I caught word of it from one of the other pilots. That mobile suit isn't my creation, but I've seen what it can do… just how destructive it is."

"Enough of that, then", Fehn said, habitually pressing one hand to her bandages. "It grows back. On the bright side, I now have ten day's leave 'for tenacity and courage in pursuit of the enemy'. So I'll be touring Shyron's other colonies visits after Sheng's concert instead."

Leaning back, he remembered the other plans they had for tonight. OZ's performance- her friend's performance out in the main park sector, only an hour away now, limiting the number of pieces they could afford to spend time on here. If haste was not taken, the entire area would be packed end-to-end with less disciplined fans of the band.

It was a kind of blessing then, that only one kind of exhibit caught his attention. Ignoring safety regulations, he delicately stretched out one hand through the holographic image of the huge, conical Shyronian escape craft from over 20 years ago, blurring its nose cone. Primitive by today's standards, it nonetheless cut an imposing figure on its lift cradle. Beneath the cone craft was a matte panel of white seemingly representing the light of destruction it fled. Smirking with her eyes as she sometimes did, Fehn placed a careful hand on his shoulder. "I thought you could do with a little elucidation. Not as though any exhibit is free of _politique_, but a reminder of how few survived the initial purges to begin anew up here."

"If it's supposed to make me feel guilty, you have the wrong man", he replied coolly, remembering his own teachings from home- at last, something he could truly speak his mind on. "This happened before I could walk. And the House of Shyron deserved it- all the evidence pointed to them trying to take over the system of Houses on Earth. A political coup."

"Truly?" she sounded surprised. "Are you so certain that the children aboard that ship had anything to do with that?"

He stiffened, trying futilely to remember any actual images from the event. Like most examples of early childhood, he instead found the only lasting reminiscences to be fuzzy and focused on things in front of him, not some big power game happening outside his nation's borders. Historical education on Earth was not quite the same thing. "I'm not saying I don't think Anno Domino overreacted. The textbooks agree on that. They'd only had thirty-some years to get used to being a global government instead of a resistance movement. All new governments make mistakes. Old ones, too."

Dismissing the huge ark-ship with a wave of the hand right through the thick middle sections, she smiled. "I didn't come here to argue historical theory with you, m'seu Verne. I merely found this display to… soothe my conscience when I first saw it. Surely you would not join us merely because of the selfish reasons you professed to the Council before? Do you not have any empathy for those exiled to the void of space against their will?"

As had happened so often lately when he was around friends, he forgot about the disguise and instead responded with his true feelings. "I know it's a mistake that should be rectified. But stealing weapons from the government isn't exactly looking for forgiveness, is it?"

"For that, we can thank the Admiral, Professor. It has always been his goal from the very start to always keep Exodus and the rest of our colonies protected behind a wall of his warships, no matter the cost to efforts at peace." As if remembering this agenda's conflict with her own goals in life, her eyes studied the floor. "Deep down, I think he knows that this can't last either, but he has far too much pride to lower his sword and beg forgiveness."

_He should have thought of that when he blasted his way off Earth with his own little fleet of loyalists_, a part of his mind snapped angrily. "There just doesn't ever seem to be a right answer to these questions, does there?"

"On the contrary", she pointed out absently, "_that_ is a right answer. Come now, we will be late for the concert…"

Leaving the museum behind brought to witness something nearly as though-provoking- the artificial night of Exodus. While the massive orbital city was normally bordered by the bright blue glow of shield indicators running along the tier structures holding the dome together, for this event they were switched off entirely, allowing stray beams of light from whatever happened by to enter, lending every building a luminous quality of nightlife Bryce knew only cities outside a planetary atmosphere could achieve.

It had not in fact resigtered to him that the darkness being allowed in for this night only was the perfect cover for those not wishing to be seen. Not until it was too late.

They had just crossed the street into an artificial park when the streetlight closest to them shattered. Neither could react before a trenchoated figure stepped out and hammered Fehn in the back with both fists. Finally, the masked man's two associated revealed themselves along with the weapons they carried.

Bryce would have gone to Fehn, but for two guns trained on his heart. Sizing him up through his goggled mask, the leader stepped up and withdrew his own pistol. "Your friend there is rather beautiful for a Waltherian. If you wish her to remain beautiful, you'll be coming with us, Professor Nirel Verne."

- - -


	11. Preparation

**Phase 11: Preparation**

- - -

A personal call at 1 am is rarely a good thing. In Heim Temeritus' case, tonight he debated whether or not to smash the communicator with his bare hands rather than be forced to leave the business at hand.

No. Not business. Pleasure. _Pleasure_. The two were rapidly becoming more difficult to balance. Thus being asked to report in to Councilor Nakara's private office still reeking of sweat and sex, for the first time in many years he devoutly wished he could be less responsible. The pudgy man had surprised him by being there in the flesh, but this did not change his inner dislike of him.

Standing, Nakara extended a hand. "Good evening, Admiral. So good of you to come at such a late hour. Can I interest you in a drink? Coffee? Tea?"

Temeritus flinched away. He did not like the toothy smile on the other man's face- it looked like he was chewing on his own gums. "No, thank you. I prefer to avoid using such things to stay up past a decent hour; just I prefer not to be woken up this time at all."

Wince. Another lie. It had come so effortlessly. "Nonetheless, I think you will appreciate my doing this without an audience." Taking a long, hot sip of his own brew to draw the tension out, Nakara's big-eyed gaze shifted to his little laptop. "You _are_ aware, of course, of the recent engagements at the Henderson colony conducted by your subordinate Mokra Parker, are you not?"

As usual, Nakara made a surgical tool out of every statement. This one was a calculated inquiry- one that would make him insult himself if he chose to lie again, and a lead-in to the real issue if he chose the path of truth. "Of course. It is my understanding that the colony suffered zero casualties."

"Certainly, Parker is to be commended for his intuition in knowing where our mystery attacker would strike", Nakara admitted. "But of greater import is exactly _how_ he stopped him or her."

"The MS", Heim grunted, barely audible. Then, even quieter: "No wonder you're in such a good mood."

"Exactly. Now, if I recall, we agreed they were to be kept safe and sound _inside_ this base. Am I wrong?"

"No."

"Sorry? Couldn't hear you, could you speak up?"

"No, sir. The council decreed that the MS were to be kept inside the Exodus colony."

"Yeah. Yeah. Uh-huh. Unfortunately, it caused quite a stir when we found out you'd been doing the exact opposite… and then tried to cover it up. Or am I wrong?"

Temeritus blinked. "Excuse me?"

"Tell me I'm wrong, that Parker was acting on his own, and I'll apologize right now. We understand how disobedient some subordinates can be, after all."

_You asshole. I see the way out you're giving me. Get me to finger Parker. Except you already know that I'm the one. You can get me any time you want. So you get rid of two obstacles to your ascension with one stone._ "…Parker acted on my orders. We believed the MS to be the only thing that could match the mystery man. I _believe_, sir, that without them along, both our fleet and the Henderson Colony would have taken losses. Measured in lives."

_Lives? What are those? Are they important?_ Nakara's casual shrug seemed to say. "That was an interesting response. Regardless, Admiral, I'm afraid this august body cannot tolerate military personnel who go against our direct orders." He paused a moment, taking a deep breath for what was to come. "By the authority of the Shyron Provisional Council, I hereby relieve you of this post."

_Termination._ The implications struck him so deaf and numb that he did not resist, and simply recited the rest of the procedure- one still rooted in the times of oceanic-navy instead of space- along with this man he hated. _The end of thirty-two years of military service._ Somehow, he figured the big part of him that wanted to rant and rage and plot and plan for Nakara's death had momentarily been shocked into submission. _Of course,_ a little voice whispered instead. _Of course, of course. How could it end any differently? We saw from the start that this man was determined to have the post, to kick any non-Shyronian out. He was so powerful and determined that it was only a matter of time._

Said man sniffed at the air. "Oh, and I suggest you clean up that uniform before you return it. Burning bridges and all that."

The final salute, eye-to-eye, seemed to last forever. Temeritus permitted himself to stew over Nakara's departing smirk several dozen minutes after leaving the office for the slate gray metal of the main corridor, drifting in its reduced artificial gravity like it was endless water. A hollow, dreamlike state to match the way he felt inside.

Then, and only then, did he begin to make new plans. Plans for the future, and plans to get him _to_ that future.

- - -

Indecision and irony had still not unfrozen Bryce Daravon, nor allowed him the freedom to act. On one hand, he was now surrounded by allies, folk from his own nation who would almost certainly be friendlier if they knew that he was one of them.

On the other, he was now surrounded by trigger-happy spies. From what he had seen of them so far, many of the trench-coated men around him were on edge, comforted only by the presence of their guns in their pockets. Such actions now could easily set them off before he could explain anything.

Instead, he remained utterly silent as the group marched them around to a descending staircase, a black oak door that necessitated retinal identification, and finally a basement devoid of light.

He thought about it long and hard when the door closed. One could not see their own arms in front of their face- it would be child's play to slip a dagger into his and Fehn's spines without a sound. So when a single lamp-light _did_ snap on in the safe house he exhaled loudly enough to be heard.

"You're certain no one saw", he heard a deep, rich voice call out. No surprise that the stress was getting to him- he could have sworn the voice sounded familiar. Whoever he was, the men who had taken them had some way of communicating with him without anyone else hearing. "It's not often we come by a man worth taking such risks to procure, Professor Verne. You should feel privileged."

Bryce looked around frantically. He couldn't see Fehn, couldn't see if she was still unconscious or awake. _Decision time. Do I tip my hand or not?_

"Before we carry out the sentence", the voice interrupted his panic, "we should share notes, you and I. I, for example, have a man with a gun directly behind you. At my word he will shoot. Would you care to give us the location of the MS units in return?"

"Gladly", he panted, trying to block out the fear creeping into his words. "But more importantly, you don't want to do that. Not around a friend."

A harsh laugh from the dark. "_You_ are not a friend, Professor. You are a traitor to the Houses of Birthright and all that they stand for. _We _are here to clean up the mess you've made. Now, I'm not interested in your motivations, only in your answers."

_No choice. _"Then you're asking the wrong man. You're asking a man who doesn't even exist."

"Yain't dead _yet_, Professor".

"I'm not Nirel Verne, either… _uncle_. Can't you recognize my voice?"

A longer pause than before, and Bryce knew he'd guessed right. "Lights. Let's see what the joke is, hmm?"

Slowly, carefully, so as to avoid setting off the agents he knew were right behind him, he removed the contacts first. Then the clip that braided his hair into a professional's comb-over instead of his usual dark redhead mop. Some features, such as the dye and the Van Dyke beard, he couldn't remove right away. But it was enough.

"B-Bryce? Bryce Daravon?"

He heard several guns click off and allowed himself a smile. "Yes, Uncle. It's me."

"How…? Wait. Take off your coat."

"What?"

"Take off your godamned COAT, boy!"

He couldn't pretend he wasn't perturbed at hearing his own uncle Rast speak to him like that. In the times they'd visited each other, Rast had been a man of the utmost joviality among family, only the dark color of his beard and deep voice spoiling the image of an oddly fit Santa Claus. As a child, Bryce would never have suspected anything sinister about the funny terms the man used sometimes when he thought the kids weren't listening at Christmastime.

In other words, there was plenty of surprise to go around. He stood motionless as Rast stepped out into the dim light, and felt his face to determine its corporeality. "What did I give you on your tenth year, boy?"

He managed, against all odds, to avoid flinching. "You gave me a basic book on the inner workings of the human body for my birthday. Complete with X-rays of bones. I liked it so much that you bought me a replacement when I lost it two years later." _Which is one of several things that started me down the path of weapons technology modelled after the human body..._

Rast hesitated, then laughed his belly-laugh, for once sounding like the warm-hearted man Bryce remembered. "Well I'll be. It really is you. I imagine you have quite the story to tell me, eh? Oh, and arms down."

Minutes later, he'd gotten a better measure of the safe house- though safe basement would be more appropriate since the upper floors were living quarters for a pair of Shyron science teachers. Rast always had two of his men sauntering around the building with the look of homeless folk, but with one always keeping an eye on it, the retinal scanner disguised by a mailbox. Uncle Rast might be a jolly fat man, but he knew his chosen trade far better than his nephew.

Then there came the decision of just how much he could say about _his_ mission.

"I felt a personal responsibility for them", he carefully explained once the topic of the MS came up. Now seated at an old-fashioned wooden desk, Rast drank in his nephew's tale with an interest that betrayed how impassive he tried to look.

"I _know_ I should have gotten permission from father. I know I should have left this to the professionals… but _I'm_ responsible for it, uncle. Have you ever, by chance, heard of the Alpha Gundam?"

_That_ stopped Rast's inquisitive gaze cold. For a while he seemed at a complete loss, his arms hanging limp at his broad sides. Then he managed; "Not a word. Your dad told me the names of the ones that got stolen- _Peregrine, Rana, _and _Hyrcanian_… but he didn't mention a fourth one."

"Well that one's on my list too, uncle. Its pilot, whoever he may be, is completely batshit insane, doesn't care who he kills."

"I'll be", Rast repeated incredulously, gingerly brushing Bryce's hair from his face. "You've grown a lot since I last saw you. And I ain't talking about your nads, boy. I see death hanging in your eyes, beyond... what happened to Yeshua."

Those eyes studied the deck plating beneath them, at once feeling heavy as iron bearings. Why did he have to bring his late brother into this? Did Rast _want_ him to feel worse than he already did? "I…I felt mom die."

Rast nodded. "I've seen and felt a lot of friends die in my line of work, boy. Won't pretend it doesn't eat at you. Never was all that close to Edwina y'know, but I knew she had a good soul. Cleaner than any man in our family at any rate. So that's why…?"

Daravon's skin burned at the memory. "Yeah. _He_ did it. And I'm no longer so naïve to think the other three won't do the same to other families in the wrong hands. Losing one family member is tough, but we got over it. Losing two was agony. That's why."

He felt something wet in his palm and opened his eyes to find hot tears, impossible to hide from his uncle. For the first time since the Solar Barrier fight, he was with someone who knew the reason for these tears, knew his purpose. He hadn't realized until now how tiring the façade of the absent-minded professor was becoming, but now returning to it felt like cutting off his own ears.

"You got spirit", Uncle Rast remarked from somewhere above him. "But spirit ain't enough, boy. Not for this task you set for yourself. Not alone. Stick with us, and I'll be your alibi fer Anno Domino when all's said and done. You act like a grownup and we'll treat you like one. And that's a lot more old Jakey would ever offer you in this situation."

That reminder brought him back to where he was. His father, Jacob. A sadistic choice. Options and possibilities galore… but who could say if his uncle's patriotism ran thicker than blood? _Who can I really trust anymore?_

No one stopped him from taking a look at the unconscious form in the corner, one of Rast's men standing over her with a pistol. _For so long now, I've fought with no hope at all. I'd resigned myself to death in the attempt. Natural to want to see the end of this nightmare, but not yet. Not yet. There are some secrets meant to be kept from a man like my uncle, even if he's the veteran here, and I'm just the rookie._

"I'll… do my best, uncle. However, I won't be able to contact you often- the alias DES created for this project- Nirel Verne- is still being watched by Shyron. That's why I need to bring the girl back with me, or they'll kill me on the spot. _Not to mention, I don't want yet another one to die because of me._

Rast nodded after a pause. "Truth be told, we were going to… discard you after we got the location from one of you. It's not a fun part of the business, that. A little beauty like that you'd never suspect to be a military pilot or soldier… which I suspect is the idea. Go to your concert, boy. We'll be in touch."

_That's it?_ It felt like a handful of minutes since they'd arrived, and now one of the trench coated men was wordlessly helping him to get the colored contacts back into his eyes.

Apparently, Rast felt it too. "Shame", he remarked dryly. "We can't even have this moment to catch up; this invisible war of ours waits for no man. But something tells me you keep your head in the game, boy, you'll do fine for now."

"When this is all over", he replied over his shoulder, "meet me at our old Christmas cottage. We can look back at this and laugh."

- - -

"Frackit". In a rare display of anger, Chief designer Umil Granq slammed both palms onto the flatboard, momentarily jarring the display in front of him. Contrary to his hopes, this did not change the scores listed in front of him, the ratings for each attribute of his creation, which seemed so much like direct markings of his own ability, like grades at school.

And he was _failing_. This was the final deadline for his team to transmit the design specs for the new MS units, those his new crew had voted to be named 'Slayers', to engineering so they could complete the details on the frames they had already constructed. Yet the MS-27A Slayers were imperfect. Flawed. They carried just as much firepower as their predecessors, true, but their speed and protection ratings were flawed; only 55 of their closest duplicate, the MS-22 Rana- 5 less than what he'd originally told Jakob Daravon they would be.

He'd _tried_. His entire team had done everything they could to iron out the drag coefficent, to reinforce the joints without weighing them down. Those efforts had ended in a general consensus that Nirel Verne was more skilled than they were.

Umil had ended up cursing them all for lazy idiots and left for the isolation of the building's vehicle pool. From there, a sole wall terminal still allowed him to know just how weak his work was next to DES' golden boy. He cursed him too, for setting such an impossible standard, for hamstringing them into using only Umil's knowledge and an incomplete backup copy. Perhaps this was karma for not going along with his final request and deleting it.

Not for the first time, he acknowledged that being the leader of this team of 'experts' Jakob had assembled was not his strength. In this particular area, previous experience with combat vehicles used in the revolution 40 years ago could only go so far- mustachioed Robert Mandell didn't seem to understand that these machines were built to be _suits _instead of tanks, and damned if he would let himself be corrected by a boy half his age.

_What's done is done_, he tried to comfort himself over the familiar nervousness welling up in his gut. _We can do no more than-_

_Hold on… what's this?_

A link left open, the electronic lock of its password picked. To a cursory glance, it would appear to be the trademark sloppiness of employees too tired out to care about logging out once they were done. Even now, a DES ID number was still required.

But the information alighting his eyes now had nothing to do with his job. It was an electronic order form to the House of Orpheon. _The secret of the Mobile Suits. Is this...? It has to be!_

A hydraulic hiss reached his ears, and he cursed again. Of course he didn't want any, he _never_ wanted any, but trouble had always come to find _him_. It didn't even matter who was coming in- he was the chief, he was supposed to be in the lab with the others, not sifting through forbidden files in the V-Pool. He could think of a handful of DES employees who wouldn't blab about this and cost him his job, three of them being his old crew.

Footsteps. Dropping any further reservation, he dropped off the upraised partition of floor that held the terminal and sprinted for the closest cover; in this case, some sort of metal pillar barely wide enough to accommodate him- the pipeline strut of one of the shuttlecraft. He couldn't tell if his quick prayer to the man upstairs did anything, but the two men took the long way around the struts, one of them lowering the ramp with a small remote in their right hand.

Umil stared. There were no scheduled take-offs today. Had they just come to retrieve a pack or something locked in the shuttlecraft? Their posture said different- they were going about their buisness efficently, wordlessly, lacking banter of any kind. And now that he looked closer, these two men in DES uniforms were two he'd never seen before.

_Just walk away, Umil. Just walk away. No one else knew they were here. Don't try to be a hero..._

A single 'ping' of bare knuckles on metal drove his heart into his stomach. He'd been so nervous he hadn't watched where his shaking hands were on the strut, and that was enough for the larger of the two to peek his head out of the boarding ramp's eclipse. He was walking this way, his face shrouded in the V-Pool's darkness...

No choice now. Umil threw himself across to the next strut over and looked hard at diving into the nearest pile of crates. But no, the tall man had a nose for suspicous activity that suited his profession. He whispered something into his earpiece and went for the lights at the door. Umil's heart beat in his chest loudly enough to block out the sound of footsteps- when that ceiling light switched on, he would be impossible to miss-

Except the shuttle's lights weren't on. Only the cockpit lights, where the tall guy's partner was already seated. By the time the room's lights were on, he'd scrambled aboard the shuttle and hidden in the rearmost area he could find, a storage bay several lengths behind the bunks and navigation room. Crouched hidden in the dark, he did not dare breathe loudly.

_Just get your thing and get going, you idiot. Get those lights off on your way out and don't look in the storage bay. Please please please don't look in the storage bay, you've looked there already..._

_That's right. There's no one here. V-Pool lights off, now close the ramp. That's good. You've found your misplaced item, now get off this shuttle._

_I said get off the shuttle. Please don't turn the thrusters on... please please please don't open the V-Pool gate..._

_Oh crap._

- - -

Premier Orpheon had always found it a curious study to take note of the changes in a man's behavior around his little metal sled. They could claim respect, could promote equality amongst crips all they wished, yet the body language was a dead giveaway that his audiences saw him as a weak and unsuitable leader. He maintained sets of cameras inside and outside his office expressly for this purpose. The differences were often worth observing in detail.

Even with complete mobility, the Premier had spent much of his career as the quintessional observer, a social scientist first and participant second. Distancing oneself from the emotional undercurrents of events, he was soon to learn, was the defining trait of the professional politician as well as the social experimenter. The former also required a degree of ability to feign the stress a truly emotional person would convey, which again was no problem for him.

Here in the darkness of his office, however, the pretense of _caring_ was not required. Instead he could simply watch something unfold that had been his chief experiment for the past decade.

As he had done countless times, his young retainer finished opening the forward 'hatch' of Kagebarai's modern hoversled. Beneath its support, behind the narrow bands at his feet, lay a grave reminder of his own mortality- as if he required such a thing. Two legs wreathed in wrinkled skin, stretched utterly useless before him as they had in the hospital he'd first woken up in.

Fortunately, he and his retainer had done this procedure countless times. The young man- Pola? Was that his name?- lifted his Premier effortlessly off the large sled and into the stationary chair beside it. As fast and professional about it as the poor lad was… there was always that inevitable moment of physical discomfort. Such a transfer required him to relinquish a moment's modesty. Even if the lad never breathed a word of it to anyone else, _they_ wouldn't ever forget it.

Strong as ever today, that embarrassment at his personal weakness and immobility burned in Kagebarai Orpheon's heart. He banished it just as quickly- the experiment was more important than his trivial, mortal insecurities.

Securely fastened into the other chair, this one festooned with devices measuring cranial activity, the old man finally relaxed his arthritic grip. "I'm ready. Make sure you lock the door, Pola."

"You're certain, sir? If something goes wrong…"

So that was the kid's name after all. "Nonsense. I'm used to this by now. Give me half an hour undisturbed. Anyone comes, tell them I'm busy rounding out funding for this year's municipal budget. I'm _counting_ on you."

Swiftly bowing, the young man turned and left. Kagebarai smiled when he was gone. Pola didn't appreciate how very unique he was, in his ability to see beyond appearances. Crippled or not, he treated his Premier with the greatest respect and obedience… He couldn't recall a single time when he had to make use of his power with that one.

Ah, yes. The experiment. _His_ experiment. More in particular, the chair that held computers identical to those secretly installed in the fruits of his long joint-venture with the House of Daravon. His own aging but incredibly sharp mind was the spark, the chair the tinder for the FATE equation.

It began. All at once, twin ampoules punctured his back, spiking his bloodstream with adrenaline it would take his own body a war's worth of stress to manufacture. The House of Orpheon couldn't very well have its Premier running out to real battles just to properly work a secret project. With this, however, he could feel the details of his office fading to a faint black and white motif within the first two minutes.

Beyond that, he couldn't tell how long it would take. Time always seemed meaningless and elusive when the equation kicked in. Just like everything else around him. His office. Pola. Earth.

Reality caved inwards around him, leaving behind only the lines of black and white. Hundreds of thousands of lines connecting everything in the universe like strings, just like the last time and the time before that.

And yet, there were always subtle differences. He'd done this in secret for long enough to comprehend the basest inputs it offered, even to affect the direction his mind peered in some cases. In others, he could pick up on the stirrings of events by feeling the raw emotions these lines radiated.

This time, though…

This time was different. New, somehow. He couldn't ignore the wails of pain emitting from up and down huge clusters of lines. The sounds of gunfire and explosions and deaths. Billions of lines representing factors were intersecting at a certain spot. Trillions, all tied up into a knot. Thousands of lines just suddenly stopping, _ending_. Dead.

The Premier decided he could only be looking at a battle. _Anno Domino versus Shyron_, he noted with whatever clarity he could muster amidst such a head rush. _Then the decisive battle between them is closer than I thought. Events that are about to unfold. Cause and effect. The life and death of thousands is affected by it, and it in turn is affected by the actions of billions of people._

_Not just any battle, but the end of Shyron and its people… forever._

This looked promising. He would observe.


End file.
